Music For Night And Day Dreams

Starring

Alex Puddy, Arooj Aftab, Ecovillage, Ex Easter Island Head, Tokyo Tea Room

The Front Runners

Norther : Ex Easter Island Head

This is very different. I guess that’s the minimum you expect from something that can be categorised as ‘experimental ambience’. 

On the one hand you’ll find long slow builds that finally come together into something compelling and addictive. On the other, you’ll find a joyful bounciness playing alongside a musical imagination that can take your breath away. Only occasionally, you’ll find something that is neither one nor the other, and it falls relatively flat. 

It took a few minutes to acclimatise to this new world. You’re more than halfway through the 9’45” of ‘Weather’ for the formless tinkling to receive the massive walrus sized bass boost that helps it to make sense. The effect is like watching individual raindrops combine to make a storm. It’s strangely compelling. ‘Lodestone’ is a huge myth of a tune, full of risk and suspense. Imagine Odysseus and his men trapped in a cave guarded by a monster without their best interests in mind. Feel the glimmer of hope that comes when the monster falls asleep and rejoice as their collective fear begins to recede into the distance.

On the lighter side, ‘Norther’ perks things up, bouncing repetitively with the glee of a child let loose on a giant space hopper. It’s jerkily danceable, raving freshly and with purpose. It’s brilliantly structured and paced. ‘Magnetic Language’ is like walking around a zoo filled with wonderful creatures you’ve never seen before, and trying to understand what you’re looking at. It’s a bright conversation between different members of the electronic species.

Ex-Easter Island Head have overturned expectations of what you can achieve in popular music is a way that I’ve only seen managed by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra in the past. 

One day all music will be made this way, and the world will divide into those who fear it as a threat, and those that welcome it as a promise.

Taster Track : Norther

The Chasing Pack

Professione Reporter : Alex Puddu.

We’re going niche, with a look at how the playboys and girls of the western world operate when their lives turn into a Dallas style soap opera. It’s all set to gentle funk disco grooves.

Alex Puddu is a smooth operator. His early albums soundtracked the world of 70s Adult X-rated soundtracks. Here, he’s created a concept album - a noir story of a globe trotting photo journalist turned gigolo, trailing wealthy widows through mysterious deaths, illicit inheritances and lavish liaisons. So far, so much teenage daydreaming during double French.

What makes this interesting is the contrast between its smooth, seductive Eurodisco funk and the grubbier themes of the concept. The songs are sung entirely in Italian, a language that I neither speak nor read but recognise as the alluring language of love. 

Shorn of context, it’s a seductive sound that parts the curtains on a superficially tempting way of life. It’s the kind of music that sounds out of place if you’re not struggling to hear it above the noisy chatter of successful people. This is music as a lifestyle choice - synthetic grooves, rhythms and beats that verge on high quality library music, underpinning important moments of sophisticated leisure. 

As standalone music, this is best on songs such as ‘Un Estate a Rio’ and ‘Spiaggo Bianco’ where the melodies are strongest. They are both chic, and indebted to Chic. 

Alex Puddu has delivered a well realised musical vision. It’s for both lovers of Italian and Italian lovers.

Taster Track : Spiaggo Bianche

Night Reign : Arooj Aftab

Uncut magazine described Arooj Aftab as “the coolest rock star in the world right now.” I’m not going to take issue with that . She’s got the looks, the style and the sophisticated tones to earn that accolade. When she's shopping for furniture she’ll be shooting past the flat pack counter and heading straight for the tables carved out of sacred trees. However, if you think that’s a ticket to the new Keef, Jim Morrison or Bowie, think again.

Aftab is an American Pakistani singing in her own language and surrounding herself with jazz practitioners of the most immersive kind. She feels like a jazz performer’s jazz performer, at home in hushed auditoriums. This is a high end, classy performance. It’s the kind of intense listening experience of, say, Billie Holiday singing ‘Strange Fruit or, more recently, the work of Lady Blackbird. What you hear is Arooj Aftab with no concessions. You can’t help being impressed even if you don’t feel you can fall in love with it.

This is jazz at its most serious and solemn. Her vocals sit deep and are delivered slowly. The bass is classically mournful. Everything is there to be listened to in quiet reverence for its brooding intensity. It’s more than a little eerie - music for the dark away from your safe community. Its strangeness is strengthened by the Pakistani songs.  Moor Mother’s poetry on ‘Bolo Na’ is a spooky but undeniably powerful addition to the atmosphere.

We’re listening to music in an age when the boundaries between genres blur. This is a jazz album, no getting away from that. But if you’re a fan of the most subdued Massive Attack and Portishead music, you’ll find something here to enjoy as well.

Taster Track : Na Gul

Crescendo : Ecovillage

The initial signs weren’t good.The band name sounded as if the music came from the community performers of a retirement village based in a jungle clearing beneath a ruined temple. And yet, there was something in the description that persuaded me to download the album a year or so ago. I pulled myself together and pressed play.

What unfolded was a nice surprise. First impressions were that its ambience could go either way. On ‘That Place’ my unfounded prejudices were first tested by a grudging acceptance that the seemingly native vocals were surprisingly effective. The blurred singing on ‘Floating’ was both intriguing and strangely emotional. The jazz saxophone that passes through ‘Hollow Dream’ caught me off guard. Where did it come from? It was like unexpectedly meeting an acquaintance from home while on holiday in a secluded part of the world. It was a little weird.  Everything that, at other times, might feel like a disadvantage was combining to make something strange but new.

Even stranger, it was the jazz leanings that had come to the rescue dragging the pieces back to the world of music from the boundaries of experimental new age drifting. Yes, at times it feels a little noodly and as if it’s tuning up for something that never arrives but its jazz tendencies tether it to something with more substance.

‘Around The Fire’ is a marriage of Enya to a 60s conservatoire singing ensemble and carries a quite delightful tune. The piano on ‘Amazing’ is almost soulful, a kind of Marvin Gaye interlude before he shares his bewilderment at how the world is going wrong. ‘The Will of the One’ may have something in the mix that sounds like wind chimes, but it’s filled with warmth and sunshine. ‘Ancient Love’ comes to you like the breath of fresh air on a sticky, humid night.

It’s time to drop the sniffy pretence and celebrate that lovely music, such as this, can be stumbled across in unexpected places.

Taster Track : Around The Fire

No Rush : Tokyo Tea Room

A little bit of mystery surrounds Tokyo Tea Room. First, what happened for them to take eleven years from formation to the release of their debut? Secondly what happened to give them such a mournful take on love?

Google can clear up the first of those. The album took so long to record and release because the band are perfectionists and wanted every detail to sound exactly right. The opening song ‘No Rush’ shows that they’ve achieved that, They’ve discovered a dreamy, slow motion pop vibe that suits them well. The perfectionist trait has turned into a real strength. Every aspect sounds gorgeous. Every note, every pause, every breath they take has you watching them as they bid for your attention. 

It’s hard to break away. Partly that’s because the songs take a similar approach and smudge one into another. You’ll be seduced into a trance as you listen. Within their three minute or so running time they carry weight and substance. On repeat listens you’ll pick up plenty that you missed the first time around. There’s much to enjoy on a first hearing too, the gently stirring climax to ‘Afterthought’ and their evident gift for melody, most strongly heard in ‘Passing Time’.

As for the second mystery - what happened to them to make this their vibe of choice - it may be better we don’t know. Whatever it was, it has triggered a vision of love as something unhappy, dressed up in music that won’t leave a smile on your face. They give you an insight into the incapacitating exhaustion of waiting by the phone for something, anything, to happen that allows you to move on. 

If you were to pin the band to a map of pop, they’d be in a region that includes Honeyglaze, London Grammar, Sade fronting the early XX and, above all, Khruangbin transplanted from Texas to the south coast.

Tokyo Tea Room do what they do exceptionally well. Their songs will linger and prove difficult to shake off. Whether they create a mood you want to wallow in, that’s another story for you to write.

Taster Track : Passing Time

As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/42qDXrw3nLMlCSg45kCnRy?si=4499207642034207 or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.

The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7EjHZr5_M3m0Zn5LEu_F3fMm&si=OhQF-ZPaBjUn4VMT