Starting with the name of the artist and the album release, I'm thinking that it might be a bit misleading. And this is for many reasons. First of all, Richard Skelton, all these years has been releasing his music under different names, such as Carousel or A Broken Consort, being the other two main names he has been using. Or to put it differently, he was using more extensively during his career. For the particular release, The Crow Autumn Bonus Disc is an album that followed after the 'A Broken Consort - Crow Autumn' with a very limited number of 100 CDRs that had a personal dedication for those very few people that bought it. And luckily, I was one of them!
A lot of things have changed for Skelton in his personal life and also as an artist. As far as I know, he still lives in Cumbria and is inspired by the natural elements and hides his instruments in the ground and then performs with the instruments after being buried so that he uses these elements to his compositions. I also had the great pleasure to talk to him personally in one of the 'Small Publishers Fair' taking place in Holborn where he was presenting to the visitors his publications in his personal Corbel Stone company. It was also a few months later that I saw him performing for the first time on Queen Elizabeth Hall in London and later again on St. Lukes in Old Street with a small orchestra.
The first track of the album is from the A Broken Consort and is called 'Severance'. There is drone-like prolonged sound from string instruments and its duration is around 5 minutes. The way I hear it is like a good introduction for the next tracks of the album and what is about to follow. And the next track is from Saddleback and called 'Gerroa Thursday'. Compared to the first track, this one starts with a slow piano and on the background is the familiar string instruments are heard. The tune doesn't change much and is like a repetition of two instruments for most of the composition.
The third track is Heidika 'Limn'. It opens with an acoustic guitar and it kind of sounds like using fingerpicking. It is quite surprising because, from all the Skelton discography that I have, I have no recollection of listening to so much guitar playing in his compositions. In comparison to the first two tracks of the album, the pattern is similar to a repetition of two instruments only. And then is the 'Shape Leaves' track that is released as Richard Skelton, which is also the big highlight of the album, and also my favourite track. It reminds me a lot of these frozen and sudden dronish sound playing behind the track that becomes more prominent at the end and is hugely emotionally powerful. It's easy for the listener to create images of sadness, solitude, grief, or hope. It's definitely a composition that enables the listener to create their own stories or revive personal experiences.
The fifth track is called again Heidika 'Limn' and is a reworked version of the third track. It sounds more interesting than the previous version as it includes more instruments and the acoustic layers are richer and more complicated. And the last track, 'Daas', is a collaboration with the Dutch artist Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek. Someone would expect that this track would have more electronic or sound art elements compared to the rest of the album, and it isn't very far from reality. The experimentation is greater and there is more freedom in the way that the track is composed. The most interesting is the collaboration of those two, but for Machinefabriek it isn't the first name as he has collaborated in the past with Aaron Martin and many other artists in his latest release 'With Voices'.
One of the main reasons I chose this album to re-listen is because the last years I've been a bit behind on Skelton's career and his various projects. I wouldn't say that my perception of listening to Skelton's music has changed differently, as I always felt this internal need to hear some modern compositions and I was never disappointed. The most interesting in this re-listening experience is to look at his expanding and changing projects and his interests around the modern composition.
Bonus: A video of Richard Skelton with the Elysian Quartet from the Vimeo account of The Wire music magazine.
The third track is Heidika 'Limn'. It opens with an acoustic guitar and it kind of sounds like using fingerpicking. It is quite surprising because, from all the Skelton discography that I have, I have no recollection of listening to so much guitar playing in his compositions. In comparison to the first two tracks of the album, the pattern is similar to a repetition of two instruments only. And then is the 'Shape Leaves' track that is released as Richard Skelton, which is also the big highlight of the album, and also my favourite track. It reminds me a lot of these frozen and sudden dronish sound playing behind the track that becomes more prominent at the end and is hugely emotionally powerful. It's easy for the listener to create images of sadness, solitude, grief, or hope. It's definitely a composition that enables the listener to create their own stories or revive personal experiences.
The fifth track is called again Heidika 'Limn' and is a reworked version of the third track. It sounds more interesting than the previous version as it includes more instruments and the acoustic layers are richer and more complicated. And the last track, 'Daas', is a collaboration with the Dutch artist Rutger Zuydervelt, aka Machinefabriek. Someone would expect that this track would have more electronic or sound art elements compared to the rest of the album, and it isn't very far from reality. The experimentation is greater and there is more freedom in the way that the track is composed. The most interesting is the collaboration of those two, but for Machinefabriek it isn't the first name as he has collaborated in the past with Aaron Martin and many other artists in his latest release 'With Voices'.
One of the main reasons I chose this album to re-listen is because the last years I've been a bit behind on Skelton's career and his various projects. I wouldn't say that my perception of listening to Skelton's music has changed differently, as I always felt this internal need to hear some modern compositions and I was never disappointed. The most interesting in this re-listening experience is to look at his expanding and changing projects and his interests around the modern composition.
Bonus: A video of Richard Skelton with the Elysian Quartet from the Vimeo account of The Wire music magazine.
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