- Label: 'The Leaf Label'
- Genre: 'Ambient'
- Release Date: 'Monday 6 February 2012'- Catalogue No: 'BAY 77CD / BAY 77E'
Our Rating:
Matthew Bourne is a serious and original musician whose performances would delight masses of the kinds of people in whom the inclination to avoid "jazz" or "improvisation" might be strong. In person and in his recordings (especially this recording) he communicates tenderness, love, warmth, curiosity, enthusiasm, fun and spontaneity in a very direct way. You don't need to have it all explained to get it.
If you remember reading about him climbing into a wrecked piano to scrabble at the strings with his finger nails (Matthew Bourne Presents Songs From A Lost Piano), fear not. There are bars here in the MONTAUK VARIATIONS that ring with that spontaneity and impulse but they are subordinated to the whole generous mood and they fit perfectly and unaffectedly with it.
To be honest, MONTAUK VARIATIONS is such a splendid album that I would recommend it to anyone on the basis of its first ten seconds. Thirteen connected notes, played gently and lovingly, entice the ear and the imagination into a whole world of gorgeously recorded piano that never shouts, is never pompous and never shows off. It's an absolute delight.
Most of the 17 short pieces were recorded late at night in the Great Hall at Dartington over a few days in 2011. The room, its open door and the whole ambience can be heard as a physical presence in the music. On "Within" "Abrade" and "One For You Keith" Bourne demonstrates his musician's appreciation of the whole piano – not just the bits connected via the keys. "Within" is especially exciting.
There are subtle cello additions on a couple of tracks but the pleasure is in hearing the solo piano, with all the timbres and resonances that a huge instrument can make when it's allowed to sing. Bourne has a deft touch with gentle chords and the spaces between the notes.
Emotionally speaking, a sense of regret and loss flickers through the album's 56 minutes. A group of three tunes, "Here" "Gone" and Knell" express that most explicitly, as being "in memory of Philip Butler-Francis". The finale, Bourne's deliciously sad version of Chaplin's "Smile" is the serene passage out of loss and disappointment. It's as beautiful as a finish as "Air (For Jonathan Flockton)" was as a beginning.
Bourne is best known as a collaborator and improviser but these tracks are manifestly solo and resolutely the work of one spirit, moved over a relatively short time span to create and perform with a consistent and recognisable voice. The one upbeat number is a piece written for John Zorn, taking its title "Psychotique" from score notes in one of Zorn's own compositions.
It's an album to be listened to without preconceptions and without inquisition. If you have enjoyed, say, Sigur Ros and Frank Zappa or possibly Frank Zappa and Explosions In The Sky I'm pretty sure you are going to love this. As a label, Leaf has such a deft touch for different and accessible cleverness that you really should give it a try.
