19 October 2021: The Pineapple Thief; Richard Barbieri

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The first half of tonight's show is an outstanding release from The Pineapple Thief

Over the last half-decade, The Pineapple Thief - led by musical polymath Bruce Soord and bolstered by the involvement of master drummer Gavin Harrison - has rapidly ascended to the upper echelons of Europe’s Alternative Rock scene.

Versions Of The Truth - out on September 4th through Kscope - is the latest installment in the band’s deserved (and welcome) rise to success.

The band's anthemic 2018 release Dissolution garnered worldwide acclaim. Earning TPT its highest chart positions to date and the album led to two extensive European headline tours (including a headline show at London's prestigious O2 Shepherd's Bush Empire) and a hugely successful tour of North America.

With the release of its new album, The Pineapple Thief is set to raise its exceptional standards once more, having produced what may be one of the most important albums of 2020.

Versions Of The Truth represents a conceptual progression from Dissolution (a contemplation on our ‘post truth’ world)... and lyrically tackles similar themes, but from a more personal perspective. Reflecting on how there can be more than one ‘version of the truth’, the album’s songs revolve around the impact the media can have on our lives and the people we love.

Recording began at Bourne Place (London) and Soord Studios (Yeovil) after the band had completed its US tour (October 2019 to April 2020), with engineering handled by Bruce Soord and Gavin Harrison. The album has been mastered by Steve Kitch. 

credits

released September 4, 2020

 

The second half of tonight's show is dedicated to ambient artist, Richard Barbieri.

The “Planets + Persona” album from 2017.

The Japan and Porcupine Tree keyboardist Richard Barbieri releases his most sonically expansive work to date, with a brand new album entitled Planets + Persona. It is the third Barbieri solo album, but the first to feature such a wide pallet of instrumentation. Vintage analogue synthesisers combine with acoustic performances and jazz elements. Twisted voices are always present, though not in a language we can recognise. Barbieri skilfully utilises the talents of a pan-European core of musicians to produce an album that marries synthesised sounds with organic instrumentation to conjure up vivid, colourful and allusive soundscapes. It’s a skilful commingling of texture and tone, mood and musicality.

Recorded in London, Italy and Sweden, this is Barbieri’s most ambitious solo work to date with a central theme of duality that runs through the album. The title alone – ‘Planets and Persona’ alludes to this, and the dialectic theme is a constant throughout the contrasting and shape-shifting sounds of the album. Take, for example, Night of the Hunter – inspired by Charles Laughton’s only directorial movie , the piece moves through subtle shifts of atmosphere and emphasis, through melodic, dream-like sequences through to harsher tones; it’s a piece that builds to a profound cumulative effect. Elsewhere, Solar Storm shifts gears artfully, with Percy Jones’ sometimes percussive bass work contrasting to the smoother synthesiser textures incisively. Barbieri’s purely solo Interstellar Medium shows that his ability to develop and realise a theme under his own auspices that underscores his innate creativity. It’s but one aspect of a thoroughly engrossing and immersive album.

Mastered by Simon Heyworth.

credits

released November 5, 2020

Written, arranged and produced by Richard Barbieri

Lisen Rylander Löve - voices, sound design, omnichord, saxophones
Luca Calabrese - trumpet
Christian Saggese - acoustic guitar
Kjell Severinsson - drums, percussion
Klas Assarsson - vibraphone
Percy Jones - bass guitar
Axel Croné - bass guitar
Grice Peters - kora
Richard Barbieri - synthesisers, keyboards, sound design, sampler and percussion programming

Recorded at The Artillery (London), Forward Studios (Roma) and IB HQ (Halmstad)

Engineers - Richard Barbieri, Andrea Secchi, Stefano Quarta, Axel Croné, Mats Johansson
Mixed by Richard Barbieri
Mastered by Simon Heyworth at Super Audio Mastering

Cover photography - Clive Maidment
Booklet photography - Clive Maidment, Luigi Colasanti Antonelli
Design - Bill Smith

My thanks goes to the following vocalists whose voices i have used, abused and often morphed into instruments and textures -
Suzanne Barbieri, Steve Hogarth, Tim Bowness, Yukiko Taniguchi, Grice Peters

Special thanks to the following people whose help in various ways enabled me to expand the possibilities with this album -
Massimo and Rmanuele Scarparo, Mats Johansson, Paul Rymer, Thomas Olsson

Samples used under the creative commons license -- 260563 patricklieberkind (small piano motif) 80399_benboncan (radio interference)

Published by Orange Asylum Music, administered by Universal Music Publishing Group

Ⓟ© 2017 Richard Barbieri

all rights reserved

electronic ambient electronica progressive London

2017 04 April: My Sleeping Karma / Richard Barbieri

Review from The Obelisk:
Having proffered tonal sweetness and instrumental heavy psych groove since their self-titled debut made its way to the ears of an eager European scene in 2006 via Elektrohasch, the German four-piece My Sleeping Karma make a jump to Napalm Records for the release of their fourth album, the CD/2LP Soma. If one that’s going to bring them to the attention of a wider audience, it’s also a move for which they’re ready. Their last album, Tri (review here), was released in 2010 and found the band focusing on various aspects of Hindu theology, using the names of gods as themes running throughout the mostly instrumental tracks. With the prior Satya (review here) in 2008, it was Buddhism at the thematic fore.
Musically, they’ve remained consistent despite working through these varied conceptual influences – you could hear Seppi’s guitar tone on the debut and on the latest and recognize the same smoothness in it then as now, though what he’s playing is more developed – and Soma takes for its basis the Hindu drink of the gods that shares its name. Each of the 55-minute full-length’s six central, mostly extended (six minutes and up) tracks is named for an “ingredient” in the soma, and each is also companioned by a transitional interlude, making the album as a whole an 11-track CD, beginning with “Pachyclada” and ending with “Psilocybe,” as each pair of songs between is separated by and interlude. This would be, at worst, a disruption of Soma’s progression, were it not for the fluidity of the material itself. If My Sleeping Karma wanted to base their fourth album around a drink, they did right in choosing something liquid, as there’s no better descriptive basis for the songs themselves – they flow as a liquid would, to be clearer about it. Rather than distract from that process, the interludes add to it, bolstering an already rich atmosphere and adding instrumental complexity and ambient vibing to the ebbs and flows within the more expansive, dynamic tracks. On any level you could want to evaluate it, Soma is a triumph in how it accomplishes the task it sets for itself – tonally, atmospherically, engagingly. It crafts memorable parts serving a greater whole and to call it manna doesn’t seem inappropriate (however disparate the cultural basis might be for doing so might be) given My Sleeping Karma’s otherworldly psychedelic range.
Most of the elements at work musically on Soma will be familiar to those who’ve experienced My Sleeping Karma’s sweetly-honed jamming before. Their apparent methodology remains consistent despite the varying themes – they jam – in a variety of moods and vibes, perhaps, but they jam nonetheless. Songs like “Pachyclada,” “Ephedra” and “Eleusine Coracana” are not without their structures, their peaks and valleys, but they have a direction underlying their largely open-feeling development. At an even nine minutes, opener “Pachyclada” is the longest piece on Soma (immediate points tallied to whatever scope might be kept) and sets the tone for what follows with strong hits from drummer Steffen punctuating the prevalent bassline of Matte as Seppi’s guitar gradually swells to prominence.
One thing My Sleeping Karma has always done well is craft a chorus out of the instrumentation, and Seppi is quick to establish that of “Pachyclada” in a flicker of a lead that returns as a sort of mini-theme within the song itself, cycling through several times in the first half before a heavier tangent emerges in the second, still keeping to the same kind of idea, but turning it into a build that reaches a satisfying apex before calming and riding out, Norman’s keys adding proggy swirls and a sort of howling tonality to complement the guitar. From its very beginning, the song is rich and encompassing – on headphones its pull is even greater – and the rainy transition it makes into the first of the album’s five interludes is no less smooth than anything on “Pachyclada” itself. The interludes are a point of interest both sonically and conceptually, as they manage to be vastly different among themselves while also tying the material before and after them together. The one between “Pachyclada” and “Ephedra” is Seppi’s guitar alone, echoing layers of simple sweetness, but to contrast, the later interlude between “Saumya” and “Somalatha” is key-led, almost trip-hop in its construction, so there’s more at work there than just moving from one track to the next. With drums at the fore between “Ephedra” and “Eleusine Coracana” and Matte’s bass accompanying birdsong between “Eleusine Coracana” and “Saumya,” it’s as though each member of My Sleeping Karma was given an interlude of their own, finally culminating in the breathing-topped, beating-heart contemplative minimalism of the interlude between “Somalatha” and closer “Psilocybe.”

 

Planets + Persona, the 2017 studio album from Richard Barbieri, is the most sonically expansive work to date from the former Japan and Porcupine Tree keyboard maestro.

The album combines vintage analogue synthesisers with acoustic instrumentation, and incorporates Jazz elements, pitching Barbieri's unique sound designs against improvisations from a personally hand-picked group of guest musicians that includes Percy Jones, Luca Calabrese and Lisen Rylander Love.

As on Stranger Inside, manipulated voices (mainly courtesy of Rylander Love's real time experiments) are present.

Recorded across Europe in studios in London, Italy and Sweden, Barbieri's third album is without doubt his most ambitious solo release to date.

Highlighting the album's central theme of duality, the artwork on the 16 page booklet features photographic scenes of dramatic Icelandic landscapes.

CD in digipak. Mastered by Simon Heyworth.  

TRACKS 

 

1. Solar Sea (7:30)
2. New Found Land (7:17)
3. Night Of The Hunter (10:44)
4. Interstellar Medium (5:38)
5. Unholy (8:58)
6. Shafts Of Light (6:39)
7. Solar Storm (6:22)

Credits

Richard Barbieri - Synthesisers, Fender Rhodes, Sampler, Electronic Percussion Programming, Sound design
 

with guest perfomers:

Lisen Rylander Love - Voices, Saxophone
Luca Calabrese - Trumpet
Kjell Severinsson - Drums
Klas Assarsson - Vibraphone
Christian Saggese - Acoustic Guitar
Grice Peters - Kora
Axel Crone - Bass
Percy Jones - Bass Guitar

24 March 2015: Steven Wilson, Daevid Allen

The first half of tonight's show will be Steven Wilson's latest solo release:  Hand. Cannot. Erase.
The album has been critically acclaimed and is arguably his best work to date.
According to Wilson, the album is written from a female perspective, and the concept and story are inspired by the case of Joyce Carol Vincent, where a woman living in a large city dies in her apartment and no one misses her for three years, despite her having family and friends.^[6] Wilson explained:
"The basic story, or concept of the record – it's about a woman growing up, who goes to live in the city, very isolated, and she disappears one day and no one notices. There's more to it than that. Now, what's really interesting about this story is that your initial reaction when you hear a story like that is, 'Ah, little old bag lady that no one notices, no one cares about.' [Vincent] wasn't [like that]. She was young, she was popular, she was attractive, she had many friends, she had family, but for whatever reason, nobody missed her for three years.

 In the second half of tonight's show, we will honor the memory of the original Pothead Pixie, Daevid Allen, who passed away on March 13. Christopher David Allen (13 January 1938 – 13 March 2015), better known as Daevid Allen, sometimes credited as Divided Alien, was an Australian poet, guitarist, singer, composer and performance artist. He was co-founder of psychedelic rock groups Soft Machine (in the UK, 1966) and Gong (in France, 1967).

We feature one of his best known releases with Gong, the classic You, Part Three of the "Radio Gnome Trilogy".  Between 1973 and 1974, Gong, now augmented by guitarist Steve Hillage, released their best-known work, the "Radio Gnome Trilogy", three records that expounded upon the (previously only hinted at) Gong mythology, Flying Teapot (1973), Angel's Egg (1973), and You (1974). For about two months at the end of 1974, Bill Bruford played drums with Gong.^[3]