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What are you listening to right now? Post Video links please.

I suppose we shouldn't be surprised but it still seems premature. RIP Mark E. Smith.

[video=youtube;p9zTSvEpt_8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=p9zTSvEpt_8[/video]
 
Hint of melancholy

[video=youtube;ZerER6af04k]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZerER6af04k[/video]
 
Absolutely devastated by the shocking news that Johann Johannsson has died. My favourite current composer, and scored the Villeneuve films which are my favourites. RIP.

[video=youtube;R_Rfkhg7s_M]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_Rfkhg7s_M[/video]
 
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Thoroughly enjoying Phil Burdett's new album, 'Psychopastoral', which also features Lyndon Morgans from Songdog. They work well together, with Lyndon performing some spoken word prose in between tracks, or should I say, in between the music of one long track as they're not broken up into discrete entities. This is a bit of a 'tour de force,' in my humble opinion, and it sounds profound though I did get a couple of the puns.

psycho-covewr.jpg

https://www.philburdett.com/news
 
Psychopastoral

psycho-covewr.jpg

Westcliff-on-Sea, you have a genius in your midst.


Phil Burdett’s tenth album, ‘Psychopastoral’, is an enigmatic gem. Consisting of twelve musical segments with spoken word interludes woven into one track, Phil seems determined to ensure that the album is considered as a whole. So, in all fairness, let’s try to do just that.

I felt a sense of wonder with this record as it unfurls in a joyous journey of discovery. Phil’s talented troupe of trusty musicians – John Bennett (electric guitar), Colleen McCarthy (backing vocals), Steve Stott (mandolin, fiddle) and Russ Strothard (bass ) – who have been playing together in this band for several years now, are joined by Songdog’s Lyndon Morgans, who has a prominent role in delivering the spoken word interludes that convey Phil’s wondrous prose so melodically, and Senor Al Franklinos, ‘Psycho PastorAl’ (real drums, drum handclaps, drum programme, bell tree, bottletop, tambourine, handclaps, sax sample, sonic oddities and production), who all combine to weave a silky sonic web that enchants and beguiles.

Phil himself is in fine voice and delivers diverse segments of contrasting moods and poetic musings that defy simple explanations. However,Phil tells us (in the credits from the artistic lyric booklet) that this timeit’s been a walk with the poets Clare, Blake and Rimbaud. Their birthplaces -Helpston, Soho and Charleville, respectively - are referenced in prose which is reprised before and after the segment, ‘Black Dress (Halloween Song)’,“Helpston to Soho & return - Charleville to Aden & return.”

The experiences of “Brother Clare” in particular are to thefore and the segment ‘John Clare Constitutional’, maps the poet’s “footsorestep” journey from High Beach to “the northern road” for the long walk home. The opening lines point towards this road to freedom as Clare absconds from anasylum in Essex, “Brighter on the road, high beach knows no rainbowspringtime,” with Clare the “prize fighter” who “knows it’s so,” a reference toone of Clare’s delusions about his identity, as he laments “mined lines are getting thin & I am old.”

Rimbaud himself is referenced (“sale petit cagot!”) in the succeeding segment, ‘Wildernessing (Folie A Deux)’, a wonderfully evocative piece in which I am reminded of Lambchop at their best. Lyndon Morgans takesover lead vocals from Phil here and is in beautiful Wagnerian voice, superbly complemented by Colleen McCarthy in this “yearning for rebirth” with sprinklings of French decorating “les mots impurs” that are imagined on a possible journey that Rimbaud (presumably) may be taking with Clare in a “folie a deux.”

The album has many images that are set in London. From the outset, in the opening segment ‘Net Of Joy’, Phil refers to “the bells of Bow” before Lyndon Morgans talks of “a figure emerging - walking slow and sure out to a misted Soho street.” Could this be Phil himself and “his Essex feet”stalking Blake’s old stomping ground? Could Blake be “the King of Old Compton Street” referenced in the subsequent segment, ‘She’s Another Day’? In a later spoken word section, we are reminded of Blake’s childhood vision of angels emanating from the “masked Sapphic pale sun through wry Peckham branches” as the writer sees “an arc & flash of firm wings shining then, incognito” but“bespangling every bough like stars." The poet’s childhood vision is a precious “light within the frame” and should be safeguarded as “a homeward guide” that can assist the wanderer when beset by “mirages of the plains (that) slither and swim” on the journey and “all the maps that have lied.”

For anyone who knows Phil and who has an inkling of his own personal travails over the last two years in which this record was made, then it’s tempting (but probably foolish) to try to connect that inkling with what is contained in ‘Psychopastoral.’ Perhaps the adverse experiences of Rimbaud and Clare - and the emboldening visions of Blake - contain clues, but there feels so much depth to this great album that it would take assiduous research to get anywhere near the meanings that may lie within. I have a sense, probably mistaken, that it’s at ease with itself. Despite whatever’s gone before. There’s a line in the second segment, the upbeat ‘She’s Another Day’, that seems to say it, “Sometimes I know just who I am,” and Phil Burdett, with this musical gang of “splendid creatures,” has found an inspirational light on this walk with the poets. Hats off to everyone involved. This is one that’s going to take a whole lot more unravelling and renewed enjoyment yet. And it was wonderful to hear Phil play the most charming and cruelly under-valued glockenspiel too.


 
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