„Before and After Roger“
The first hour of the night – a mix of quiet moods. I didn‘t talk much, I wanted to find a way a way to get through the night without losing part of my utterly seductive voice in the dry studio air. It worked. And the sequence of tracks, pure joy in my ears. Maybe the penultimate track was a bit too vivid for the overall mood, but then again, the rhythmic pulse of Frahm‘s „Kaleidoscope“ may have kept eyes and ears open late at night.
Dictaphone really should be a discovery for some people. Norma Winstone‘s album of „songs for films“ is so delightful and makes you wanna watch some of the old movies. Roger Eno‘s first solo work in seven years is a document of radical reluctance and accompanied by short short stories offering a desolate East Anglia coastline as a fascinating state of mind. Andy Sheppard‘s quartet music is so brilliant, and some Manas already share my enthusiasm for it.
Nils Frahm‘s album is the real surprise for me, because I didn‘t think he could offer much more than smart wallpaper music. In slight difference to Gregs, I also like the way he works with voices, but then again, the jukebox man and myself always had nice arguments about the sense and nonsense of Leonard Cohen‘s female background singers.
„The Ocean And The Hinterland“
This is a love-it-or-leave-it-hour about the music of Flying Saucer Attack. David Pearce and his lo-fi-aesthetics don‘t mess with modernity, persona, technology – and create a world full of distant echoes. His unexpected return in 2015 with the album „Instrumentals 2015“ didn‘t deliver anything different, except the fact that it WAS different, in the most subtle ways. Turn on the volume, and lose yourself in a twilight world of distortion and disturbing beauty. This is the end of campfire guitar romance in the British pop culture, so to speak.
„Farewell Aldebaran“
Now prepare yourself for the last twenty minutes (nearly) of the night. Before this „live-radio-mixtape“ (the last hour is always split in two halfs by the news at 5.30), I played Richard Horovitz‘s „Elephant Dance“ commenting on the fabulous reissue of EROS IN ARABIA without much ado about its position at the crossroads of Fourth World music and minimalism.
And I wished everybody a nice weekend shortly anouncing what to (vaguely) expect during the night‘s last passage: selected bird songs from the album „The Beauty of The Sound Approach“, and a song about the end of the world (both on ECC Records).
What I didn‘t say, is this: you can find that song named „Lullaby“ on the three-vinyl-box „The Self Preservation Society“, a good example for a great cover album project. The artists went on treasure hunt in the late 60‘s and early 70‘s. You‘ll there make the aquaintance of rather unknown gems (like this lullaby, originally part of a psychedelic folk album, a REALLY psychedelic folk album named FAREWELL ALDEBARAN. And you‘ll make the aquaintance of passionate takes on well-known songs like „White Rabbit“.
And what I didn‘t say, too, was how these twenty minutes will end. I didn‘t know that myself. Then, while one of these exotic birds were taking center stage, I saw an old vinyl album in a corner. In fact, I forgot it in the studio, months ago. And I looked at the tracklist. And I smiled. Everything fell into place.