RESOLUTE
Babel Label
Raph Clarkson: trombone, FX; Simon Roth: drums; Phil Merriman: keyboards; Gboyega Odubanjo: spoken word.
Recorded live in Brighton by Liran Donin
This is a further installment of Raph Clarkson’s exploration of words and music. While a previous outing as, The Dissolute Society with ‘Soldiering on’, focused on the range of pitches that the sung voice could produce, on this set the inspiration is more in terms of the range of rhythms of the spoken voice. The cover art, created by Aurelie Freoua, reflects a further element of the multimedia experimentation of this group as she often creates live paintings during their performance. As a description of the sound of the band, ‘It’s just noise’ (track 7), has this phrase repeated over disjointed sounds from the band and ends with the words ‘and you can dance if you want to’. Of course, it is not ‘just noise’ but well crafted, considered improvisation – but the last words ring true for sections of several of the pieces.
The opening two tracks work emotionally intense poetry against insistent electronica tinged with jazz rhythms; ‘Swimming’ is recited by Odubanjo and is less about the pleasure of moving in the water than about the fear of having to travel through water away from something more fearsome where the narrator, as a boy, cannot swim and the poem's refrain is 'we're drowning, we're drowning, we're drowning, I stroke' ; ‘Holding tight’, recited by Clarkson, is about the terrors of mental breakdown and its treatment. In these pieces, the words create the mood for the players to improvise upon, shifting from hope to anguish. Even a piece that could be a love poem, ‘I just want to be cool for you’, is not about the joy of love but the pain of rejection – and yet, across this piece, Clarkson’s effects-laden trombone soloing offers a degree of optimism. As such, the whole experience of listening to the pieces here is not so different to listening to traditional folk tunes or the Blues – the raw honesty of the words are coupled with shifts in musical style that reinforce the emotions that are being laid bare, but the listener becomes engaged in a way that is ultimately uplifting.
Compared with The Dissolute Society, this set-up has a much looser edge to it, with the mix of electronic effects, tangential drum patterns and trombone solos feeling far more improvised and in-the-moment. This is particularly apparent in ‘The Field’ (track 4) which feature some beautiful trombone playing, and are based on words composed by a seven year old boy whose autism affected his ability to communicate. Clarkson had been teaching him trumpet and, during a conversation asked whether he sometimes “had pictures in his head, and he told me if he thought of a field before he went to sleep, it calmed him down. The description of the field on the album are his words.”
Reviewed by Chris Baber
Babel Label
Raph Clarkson: trombone, FX; Simon Roth: drums; Phil Merriman: keyboards; Gboyega Odubanjo: spoken word.
Recorded live in Brighton by Liran Donin
This is a further installment of Raph Clarkson’s exploration of words and music. While a previous outing as, The Dissolute Society with ‘Soldiering on’, focused on the range of pitches that the sung voice could produce, on this set the inspiration is more in terms of the range of rhythms of the spoken voice. The cover art, created by Aurelie Freoua, reflects a further element of the multimedia experimentation of this group as she often creates live paintings during their performance. As a description of the sound of the band, ‘It’s just noise’ (track 7), has this phrase repeated over disjointed sounds from the band and ends with the words ‘and you can dance if you want to’. Of course, it is not ‘just noise’ but well crafted, considered improvisation – but the last words ring true for sections of several of the pieces.
The opening two tracks work emotionally intense poetry against insistent electronica tinged with jazz rhythms; ‘Swimming’ is recited by Odubanjo and is less about the pleasure of moving in the water than about the fear of having to travel through water away from something more fearsome where the narrator, as a boy, cannot swim and the poem's refrain is 'we're drowning, we're drowning, we're drowning, I stroke' ; ‘Holding tight’, recited by Clarkson, is about the terrors of mental breakdown and its treatment. In these pieces, the words create the mood for the players to improvise upon, shifting from hope to anguish. Even a piece that could be a love poem, ‘I just want to be cool for you’, is not about the joy of love but the pain of rejection – and yet, across this piece, Clarkson’s effects-laden trombone soloing offers a degree of optimism. As such, the whole experience of listening to the pieces here is not so different to listening to traditional folk tunes or the Blues – the raw honesty of the words are coupled with shifts in musical style that reinforce the emotions that are being laid bare, but the listener becomes engaged in a way that is ultimately uplifting.
Compared with The Dissolute Society, this set-up has a much looser edge to it, with the mix of electronic effects, tangential drum patterns and trombone solos feeling far more improvised and in-the-moment. This is particularly apparent in ‘The Field’ (track 4) which feature some beautiful trombone playing, and are based on words composed by a seven year old boy whose autism affected his ability to communicate. Clarkson had been teaching him trumpet and, during a conversation asked whether he sometimes “had pictures in his head, and he told me if he thought of a field before he went to sleep, it calmed him down. The description of the field on the album are his words.”
Reviewed by Chris Baber
