Cherry on Top with New Album, Highline Show
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10 Saturday, March 22, 2014 www.thenational.ae The National thereview The National thereview Saturday, March 22, 2014 www.thenational.ae 11 this week’s essential reading ‘God’s lucky man: The “charmed ‘MacGowan sussed out the political and attitudinal affinities between British working- { life” of Shane MacGowan’ by class heroes such as The Clash and balladeering Irish folk heroes such as the Dubliners’ music { Matthew Hennesy, City Journal playlist What the critics have said about Neneh Cherry’s four other albums Raw Like Sushi Blank EMI (1989) “An unorthodox and brilliantly daring blend of R&B, rap, pop and dance music. Full of personality, the singer/rap- per is as thought-provoking as she is witty and humor- ous when addressing rela- tionships and taking aim at less-than-kosher behaviour generation of males and females alike.” – ALLMUSIC.COM Homebrew For Neneh Cherry and her producer Four Tet, restraint can be EMI (1992) fruitful. Andy Battaglia enjoys their exercise in subtraction “She triumphs with a seam- less and unorthodox blend of hip-hop, R&B, dance music, The operative parts in Across the Wa- fered Cherry as a sassy, brassy woman band The Stooges, jazz luminary Or- and pop, and on Trout, the ter, the striking first song on Neneh hip to the swagger and style of youth nette Coleman and the hip-hop duo presence of REM’s Michael Cherry’s new album Blank Project, on the streets of London. The song Madvillain (featuring Madlib and Stipe brings rock to the ec- are sparse and plain: nothing but the was about a group of fashion mavens M F Doom). It all made more sense click and clack of some drums and with whom she shared a scene – the than would seem sensible, and join- lectic mix. As humorous as a voice stretched across an empty “buffalo” lifestyle abounded among ing it all in together was Cherry, with Cherry can be, her reflections expanse of space. A subtle wisp of rude boys and rebellious girls whose her seamless voice and her special, on relationships and social is- reverb wavers around the edges, but ranks, as eulogised once in the UK almost mystical sort of cohering sues are often quite pointed.” no more than figures in any normal newspaper The Guardian, included presence. – ALLMUSIC.COM resonant room. No elements of “stu- “new breeds of free-range urban cow- For Blank Project, credited on the dio craft” can be discerned. None of boys in Ray-Ban aviators and hats; cover to Cherry alone, she united the production rises up or preens for a suited and booted beauty acces- with three similarly eclectic collabo- Man attention. In fact, there’s very little sorised by a feathered Native Ameri- rators: the London-based fusion there, in terms of actual sound. can headdress; a smiling black boxer duo RocketNumberNine and Kieran Circa (1996) So how does it all amount, so utterly with a blowsy red rose tucked be- Hebden, aka Four Tet, an electronic and astoundingly, to a swelling sym- hind his ear; boys in highly polished producer with unusual and increas- “The album is a high-quality phony of human musical presence? brogues worn with tracksuits …”. ingly impressive reach. RocketNum- collection of alt-rock women’s’ The answer owes in part to the The list continued, in tribute to berNine handle most of the musical of techno and house, Four Tet, as a lay back in the studio and join in the board arpeggio, a swell of synthetic peer of the best practitioners of the anthems, at times bluesy, at voice, which sounds both stylisti- the late stylist and image-maker Ray playing: the rumbles of drums, live- producer, has shown a remarkable act of listening himself, with only strings. Then the task turns to his form – including the Art Ensemble times folksy, and much more cally accentuated and straightfor- Petri, who masterminded the look. wire runs of electric bass, elements of ability to shift up in terms of style and subtle embellishments and refined laptop, which he uses – in real time, of Chicago, who figured in another akin to her previous rock-lean- wardly sung. As a musician recently No artefact of “buffalo” culture, how- electronics that swirl and seethe all sound. And sometimes by removing knob-twiddling that focus the other- with the clocking ticking down at recent offering that all involved in ing effort Homebrew than her matured into her 50s, Cherry is in ever, travelled more widely or persist- around the background. On the title style and sound almost entirely. In an worldly intensity that Souleyman had the bottom of the screen – to create Blank Project, and Omar Souleyman tight command of her instrument, ed more strongly than Cherry’s hit. It track, the “band” creates a dynamic, interview with Fact magazine, Cherry already long-since made his own. something that proves to be both a too, might admire quite a bit. breakthrough Raw Like Sushi. and her experience is clear. Across was surprising for its specificity and agitated racket while Cherry vents spoke about the album’s remarkably Songs like Ya Yumma benefit from a ramshackle tribute and a rapturous Released in 1969 and reissued by an The songs have an organic, the Water begins in medias res, as if for its playful shifts in tone, which vocally over top. Via lyrics on the sub- spare opening track. “It was a much sense of space that seems to be Four remake. Listening back after the archival label in California, it’s called earthy feel, in tune with the Lilith in the middle of some private ritual flipped seemingly trifling matters ject of love, she gives voice to the an- bigger production initially,” she said, Tet’s addition to the mix, but other- clock strikes zero, he smiles wide. Comme a la Radio, and by any meas- Fair alternative-style musical for which the singer intones poetic into matters of lasting consequence. ger and agreeability that can govern “but we ended up taking a lot of the wise the spotlight shines elsewhere: “I’m going to play it in the club this ure it’s one of the most arrestingly movement.” – ALLMUSIC.COM incantations to herself, and it’s not But all makers of pop music, or at amorous affairs. “I feel so small,” she stuff away and stripping it back and on Souleyman and the musicians he weekend, as is,” he says. strange records ever made. The name long before Cherry is off on an inter- least a majority of them, traffic in sings, before finding the centre of so making it simpler.” jams with. His work with Neneh Cherry sounds on the cover is Brigitte Fontaine, a nal journey projected outward. novelty and surprise. So what made many matters of the heart: “I hate While mixing, Four Tet evidently With work of this sort, Four Tet drawn from a process that is simi- French singer who worked her way The Cherry Thing “We reflect in the quiet times in- Cherry more surprising than most? you, I hate you, I love you, I love you – I erased a synthesiser part and the has evolved into one of the most in- larly selective and heady, as well as out of pop and into ever more adven- side our heads,” she sings, “and give The answer to that can be heard in love it all.” sound of timpanis too, hearing Neneh Cherry teresting thinkers in sound at work energetically impromptu. In that, turous sounds. The music behind Smalltown Supersound (2012) thanks for our children tucked up the singular and idiosyncratic choic- That one plays more or less like something more monumental in Blank Project in any genre, with an approach that Blank Project brings Cherry back her is played with a mix of wild aban- sweetly in their beds – inside their es she has made, some of very recent a rock song, albeit with an experi- the selective quietude he could make Smalltown Supersound is both subtractive and additive. once again to jazz. None of the album don and cultivated control by the Art “The Cherry Thing is a col- heads.” Other sources for contem- vintage. In 2012, for her first full- mental bent. But then others make surround Cherry’s voice. “The way Dh50 There’s another display of his handi- is jazzy in a literal sense – there’s not Ensemble, who pushed jazz out past laboration whose immedia- plation include God, wisdom blow- length album project in 16 years, she the electronic presence of Four Tet he worked was taking things away work for an online video series, Beat a horn to be heard – but the vibe has its own boundaries. Some parts are cy, dynamic and motion ing in the breeze and “trickling water teamed with nobody’s first guess for felt. On Naked, synthesised drum more than anything that might com- This. There you can watch him craft much in common with a cerebral busy and kinetic; others are plain and are organic; its creative dripping down, slow like some riv- a crack team of collaborators: a Nor- sounds accent more organic percus- plicate the process,” said Ben Page of two were working together, predic- a track on the fly using nothing but jazz band jamming through ideas spare. All of it is resounding in ways originality singular. It ers without a sound”. It’s quiet and wegian free-jazz band. That meeting, sion, and others (Weightless, Out of RocketNumberNine, lending praise tions tended toward imaginings of sounds from a very specific source. out loud. suggestive of nothing other than mu- unabashedly and nakedly majestic, pitched with drama but at- with the group known as The Thing, the Black) veer towards certifiable to a process that put parts of his own an all-over-the-place, mash-up sort With only 10 minutes on the clock, The magnetism makes sense, as sic of its own proudly singular and tuned to the everyday.