Price paid: £7, Haystacks Music (Hay-on-Wye). 

The late Huw Lloyd Langton (1951-2012) represents a curious figure within the storied saga of Hawkwind. A more-or-less founding member of the group, he was a mere eighteen years old when he hooked up with Dave Brock, Nik Turner and co, jamming around Notting Hill at the tail end of the ‘60s, and his somewhat Gilmour-esque lead guitar work formed one of the more prominent elements of the band’s embryonic debut LP.

Shortly thereafter however, Langton exited Hawkwind (and seemingly the music industry as a whole) after suffering what can only be described, in the parlance of the times, as a severe freakout midway through an epic, acid-saturated residency which saw the band performing for several days straight within an inflatable geodesic dome illegally erected outside the gates of the 1970 Isle of Wight festival (which was actually charging people to enter if you can believe that - super uncool, man).

Some commentators (including Joe Banks, author of the recently published Hawkwind: Days of the Underground) have identified Hawkwind’s failure to replace Langton as one of the key factors which subsequently allowed the band’s signature sound to coalesce. Certainly, their position as a major ‘70s rock band without a conventional lead guitarist seems noteworthy. Brock’s relentless concentration on grinding, rudimentary barre chords went a long way toward establishing their now widely recognised proto-punk cred, whilst the lack of a melodic lead instrument conversely helped push them further toward the kosmische/‘krautrock’ realm, with Turner’s heavily effected woodwinds, DikMik and Del Dettmar’s primitive electronics and (later) Simon House’s baroque synthesizers all stepping up in turn to fill the void.

As valid as this argument may be however, regular readers will be aware that I am inclined toward the belief that any piece of music can be improved with the addition of a ragin’ guitar solo or two, and as such, I can’t help but find myself ruing Langton’s absence from Hawkwind’s golden age recordings, wondering what this pivotal / invisible figure may (or may not) have contributed to the grandeur of the Space Ritual, had he only kept his head together and made it to the shuttle in time for take-off.

Brave listeners who have allowed their Hawkwind “cut off point” to dawdle far beyond the Lemmy era though will of course had their chance to find out just what HLL (if I may) had to offer, as, in the dying days of the 1970s, he popped up again, seemingly out of nowhere, bringing a new sense of energy which to a great extent helped the band to retool themselves for the ‘80s, following the unedifying collapse of their Robert Calvert-dominated late ‘70s futurist art-pop era (which is another story entirely).

Langton’s work during his second tenure with Hawkwind can perhaps be best appreciated on the ‘Live ‘79’ LP, recorded mere months after he re-joined. Therein, his searing, virtuosic lead shred often dominates proceedings, suggesting that the poor lad may well have spent his ‘lost years’ obsessively practicing scales and lab-testing new amps. [Actually, Langton had spent ’75 to ’77 playing with the group Widowmaker, formed by ex-Mott The Hoople guitarist Ariel Bender - Fact Checkin’ Ed.]

Given the speed with which talented players were usually ejected from Hawkwind’s orbit under Baron Brock’s oft-paranoid leadership, Langton actually proceeded to hang on for quite a while too, overseeing the band’s transition to a more streamlined, metallic hard rock sound through the ‘80s before finally departing, for reasons unknown to myself, in 1988. (“All was not well with the band,” Wikipedia notes ominously.)

Which brings us, finally, to The Lloyd Langton Group, with whom Langton seems to have performed and recorded in parallel with his Hawkwind commitments through the mid/late ‘80s. Released in ’85 through the West London-based independent label Flicknife (who also handled the bulk of Hawkwind’s output through this period), ‘Night Air’ was their first proper LP, featuring a power trio line-up completed by Kenny Wilson on bass and drummer John Clark.

A consummate set of soaring, propulsive chromium-plated guitar rock, the album to some extent plugs straight into the legacy of the ‘70s underground, but does so with class rather than retrogressive boorishness, with the pioneering work of Martin Weaver (Wicked Lady / Dark) in particular providing a useful reference point, not least on the killer, slow-burning riffage of obvious single ‘Call Your Number’.

At the same time though, ‘Night Air’ is recognisably a product of the ‘80s. Though avoiding the more obvious clichés, its sound palette is redolent of that decade in a way that’s difficult to really put into words. Emptying out my brain-pan in search of a way to convey this highly specific ‘80s indie label trad rock sound, all I can really come up with is the impression of a time when yr average rock band guys used solid state amps, and actually thought they were cool. The warm, fuzzy weirdness which carried through from the late ‘60s into AOR’s imperial phase in the ‘70s has been squashed down here to a colder, sleeker sound, funnelled to the recording desk via lo-tech circuit boards and square, bakelite-coated boxes.

It’s a sound which makes me think of rack-mounted units fronted with cheap-looking black plastic, rows little knobs picked out in lime green or cherry red; of old speaker stacks reeking of tobacco, dragged out from some pub’s old backline, and of subterranean rooms done out like futuristic packing warehouses. None of which is meant as a criticism, I should stress - Langton’s guitar tone is often great here, whirring and whirling like a fairground organ on the extended outro to ‘Before is All’. It’s just… different, that’s all.

Conversely, there are some slightly Floyd-ish “introspection in the country house” type moments creeping in too here and there (you can hear ‘em in Langton’s strained middle-class voice and the faint ‘atmospheric’ keyboards just about discernable on the opening track, and in the faux-medieval acoustic recitation, reverbed just so, which closes out side one) - even though I daresay the closest these guys ever got to the shining castles of the rock aristocracy was zooming past a picturesque gatehouse or two on a mid-week schlepp up to a gig in Wolverhampton.

Overall, side # 1 probably fares best here. In addition to the aforementioned ‘Call Your Number’, the album’s title track, with its plaintive, minor key melody, singing-in-my-real-voice vocals and general air of sonic ambition transcending cash-strapped production, actually isn’t a million miles away from a late ‘80s Bevis Frond banger, whilst the upbeat ‘Painted Evergreen’ sounds like the kind of thing Motörhead might have come up with, had they taken their foot off the gas and spent a few weeks fortified by nothing but Earl Grey and scones.

Side # 2 largely stays on-message musically speaking, even as ‘Diseased Society’s lyrical concerns hit that hyper-specific “psychedelic hangover meets nebulous Thatcher-era social criticism” sweet-spot (you know the one), before ‘Lonely Man’ and ‘Candle Burning’ allow Lloyd Langton to spread his musical wings a bit, exploring more melancholic, spaced out territory, with creditable, if not exactly mind-blowing, results.

Only the closing ‘Lunar-Tic’ seems like an outlier - a sort of drugged out, post-punk-ish experiment whose jerky, cyclical rhythms and muttering, pub-loony vocals close out what has has otherwise proved a surprisingly uplifting and affirmative record with a dose of the kind of gloomy discombobulation you’d reasonably expect of a man best known for having blown his brains out with LSD and disappeared from view over a decade beforehand.

For the most part though, the material on ‘Night Air’ feels far more energised and inspired than the rather lumpen, “will-this-do?” approach taken by Hawkwind’s output during the same time period, suggesting that Lloyd Langton was already saving up his A-game for his solo work. Stronger writing and more nuanced playing bring a greater sense of excitement and forward momentum to proceedings, with the distant echoes of SF paperback psychedelia enhanced by Ande Tucker’s absolutely terrific interplanetary cityscape artwork, ironically providing the Lloyd Langton Group with a rocket-propelled kick that Hawkwind had largely abandoned by this point.

Though it’s unlikely to quite make the grade as a ‘lost classic’, anyone who shares my fascination with UK freak-rock and its aftermath should nonetheless find ‘Night Air’ a solidly rewarding listen, joining a few dots between sounds, scenes and personnel in engaging fashion, suggesting that the enigmatic Huw Lloyd Langton was, above all else, a gentleman of refined taste and no little talent - may he rest in peace.

‘Night Air’ by The Lloyd Langton Group gets a seemingly fairly blurry thumbs up! 

Labels: album reviews, Hawkwind, Huw Lloyd Langton, old LPs

Price paid: £8, Sounds of the Universe (Soho).

There’s a special place in heaven for early ‘60s piano jazz albums with photos of demurely dressed young ladies relaxing in the countryside on the cover, and The Ramsey Lewis Trio’s ‘Barefoot Sunday Blues’, I would dare to suggest, represents the very apotheosis of this curious cultural phenomenon.

As befits recording artistes signed to Argo, jazz imprint of Chicago’s Chess Records, Lewis and his boys (comprising bassist Eldee Young and drummer Red Holt, for the most part) veer heavily toward unpretentious, blue-based arrangements, eschewing both ‘cool’ Brubeck-esque West Coast shit and the more cerebral lyricism of Bill Evans in favour of a warmer, looser and less technically uptight approach, foregrounding rhythm at all times and primarily concentrating upon the business of just playin’ the fuckin’ tunes, even verging into r’n’b/pop territory in places.

Featuring what Le Roi Jones’ obligatory sanctimonious sleeve notes describe as “an anonymous soul sister whispering her sensuous refrain” - ie, vocalising the title, ‘Comanche’-style, on each 12 bar change-over - the closing ‘Come On Baby’ in particular would have been a shoe-in for the soundtrack to some beatnik exploitation flick.

Lewis’s trio had of course been kicking this easy-going stuff out day-in, day-out for the better part of a decade at this point, so it’s hardly surprising that the players are consummate to a T, keeping things a just-a-few-small-few notches livelier and more inventive than one might reasonably expect of an early-‘60s-piano-jazz-album-with-photo-of-a-demurely-dressed-young-lady-relaxing-in-the-countryside-on-the-cover.

Even in this less-than-revolutionary context, musicians this deeply entrenched in their craft are almost incapable of not giving us something to think about now and again, and guest bassist Christopher White in particular makes his presence felt here with a few spectacular scuttles up and down the higher end of his instrument’s neck on the opening ‘Lonely Avenue’, practically establishing himself as the track’s lead player - a trick he repeats on side # 2’s ‘Act Like You Mean It’ (an Eldee Young composition, no less).

In fact, the latter track represents an interesting stylistic diversion, with Lewis’s keys remaining deep in the background behind White’s dextrous bass excursions (almost reminiscent of Pentangle’s Danny Thompson in places), the leader’s contribution concentrating more upon some spirited vocal “ba ba de bums”, seemingly calling out the melody to the bassist midway through the take, which should surely have earned him a ‘vocal’ credit.

Sounds like everybody’s having a ton of fun on that one anyway, but primary bassman Young meanwhile distinguishes himself by adding some wheezing, rather drone-y cello to the otherwise fairly routine run through Charles Lloyd’s ‘Island Blues’ which closes out side # 1.

Though not exactly what you’d call a grand-standing, virtuoso player on the evidence of these cuts, Lewis himself meanwhile does good work on tracks like Dave Grusin’s ‘Sarah Jane’ And his own ‘Don’t Even Kick It Around’, expanding the melodies in some pleasantly far-flung, arabesque directions, as well as adding some Mingus-esque “AH!”s and “HUH!”s to proceedings, just about discernable in the background of the livelier numbers.

Holt’s drumming meanwhile is, as noted, rock solid, lending the trio a swing that certainly wouldn’t disgrace Chess’s core output, his heavy, heartbeat pulse implying that he’d be equally content pounding it out for Muddy Waters or Fats Domino or whoever, even as his brushy snare n’ hi-hat stuff doffs cap to the more shimmery subtleties of Kennedy-era crossover jazz.

Recorded in a single day just over three months before JFK kicked the bucket (if the sleeve is to be believed), the only mystery proposed by this resolutely straight-forward collection of earthy, professionally rendered music is -- given that this was all apparently laid down as one uninterrupted session, why does White sub for Young on two tunes, including one that the latter actually wrote? Did Young arrive late, or have to leave early, or something? White is clearly no slouch and knows the material well though, so…. what’s the deal here?

A belated footnote in one of those moribund 1000+ page plus ‘guide to jazz’ compendiums down the local library may or may not satisfy my curiosity on this point, but…. instead let’s savour the mystery. Was Young in the depths of a heavy scag habit, passing out at regular intervals, with White hurriedly hustled in by taxi? Or, was the shark-like White being groomed as Young’s replacement, as the latter cursed his fat fingers, grimly contemplating the loss of touring income as he shuffled off to write advertising jingles? Who knows, who knows. Well, Ramsey Lewis (who is still with us, praise the lord) quite possibly knows, but I’m darned if I can be bothered to ask him.

Admittedly much more of a spring / summer record that one capable of standing up to the more rigorous demands of autumn / winter listening, ‘Barefoot Sunday Blues’ nonetheless opens a sweet window into an easier time, when humble, craft-based jazzers roamed the earth, just writing and playing their fuckin’ tunes - a touch too fruity to make it as elevator music, but way, way too conventional to put the name of Ramsey Lewis ‘pon the lips of any young hipster digging into the storied legacy of the post-bop/spiritual contingent decades down the line.

It’s just some nice, groovy music, played by good people, with a nice groovy picture on the front - reminding us of a time when recorded music was a sufficiently valuable commodity that that was enough. Now though, I’m going to put it back til next June and start listening to, I dunno, Kluster or something.

‘Barefoot Sunday Blues’ by the Ramey Lewis Trio gets an out of season THUMBS UP! 

Choicest selection from the inner sleeve: 

Labels: album reviews, jazz, old LPs, Ramsey Lewis Trio

Here we go again…. with just a few quick shout-outs for potential purchases this coming Bandcamp Revenue-Free Friday (6th), assuming we can tear ourselves away from whatever rancorous madness will no doubt be unfolding across the U.S.A. by that point. (In the unlikely event you’re reading this and have an uncast vote, I’ll assume you know what you need to do with it.)

Anyway, on with what, for the foreseeable, we must laughably call ‘the show’... a rare “no electric guitars at all” edition this time around, curiously.

 

Sam Barton.

London-based brass & electronics manipulator Sam Barton is probably best-known as one quarter of the group Teeth of the Sea, but enough ‘about the author’ shit, have you HEARD the track ‘Sleuth’, which forms part of his digital only solo album ‘Acid Apple Satin Walls’, uploaded to bandcamp back in September? It’s incredible.

Multiple layers of glimmering, sci-fi synth drift slip Earth’s gravitational pull within seconds, as a crushingly mournful trumpet rings out loud and clear from the heart of some cavernous, off-world reverb tank, before a more circumspect Casio koto preset jazz lament takes over, adding just the right tug of steely-eyed nostalgia to our unfolding journey across a pulsing, Mobius/Jodorowsky cityscape of sound.

If that boring-ass ‘Bladerunner’ sequel from a couple of years back had actually succeeded in recapturing some scintilla of the original film’s visionary quality, this is the music I’d imagine we might have heard blazing across the opening credits - that’s all I’m sayin’ on the subject. It’s a shame Barton calls it a day after only six minutes (I could easily have gone for to sixty), but - leave ‘em wanting more, right?

A first trawl through the full album reveals many more exciting, bedroom-bound interstellar excursions, and it’s definitely top of my ‘buy list’ for this Friday, but for now, it’s this one track that’s hit me above all else.

 

Angel Bat Dawid & Tha Brothahood.

A far cry from the melancholic tone of Angel Bat Dawid’s Transition East single from earlier this year, this double LP live set, recorded for the most part with her instrument-swapping six piece band during an appearance at 2019’s Berlin Jazzfest, is pure fire.

As is extensively detailed in the sleeve notes accompanying International Anthem’s digital release (vinyl scheduled for early next year), it seems Dawid and her companions had a pretty rough time of it on the days surrounding their performance in Berlin, and as a result, a hefty weight of simmering anger and frustration found itself channelled into a spell-bindingly anarchic and uncompromising performance, guaranteed to deliver an immediate kick to the nuts of anyone who’s written off this ‘new jazz’ scene as mere lifestyle music for hipper-than-thou home-workers, or some such (hi there).

An exuberant and outspoken stage performer to put it mildly, Dawid here leads her band through an increasingly intense series of rhythmic vocal mantras and cathartic call and response routines, sometimes veering closer to some kind of unhinged improvised theatre, revival church testimonial or group therapy session than to many listeners’ preconceptions of a quote-unquote ‘jazz’ set.

To some extent recalling the more militant and unglued corners of Art Ensemble of Chicago’s discography, one imagines this must have put the wind up some segments of the refined European festival crowd presumably assembled for this show, but, any walk-outs or deserters from the concert space may well have been forced to ask themselves - if you don't want to listen to an African-American woman speaking her mind, what the hell are you doing at a jazz festival?

Contemplation of that question, to my mind, provides an immediate validation of Dawid’s confrontational - genuinely rather “‘punk’” in fact - performance style, and needless to say, those jazzbos who did stay on for the duration will have found themselves richly rewarded, in pure muso terms just as much as on the more visceral/emotional/existential side of things.

As unconventional as their approach may have been here, Dawid and her band are certainly no slouches on the technical front. The extended interplay between Dawid’s clarinet and Xristian Espinoza’s sax on the loping grooves of ‘London’, and her keyboard improvisations on ‘Black Family’, are absolutely inspired, whilst the smouldering, nocturnal heft of the piano/horn intro to ‘We are Starzz’ is little short of sublime. Enhanced by wild, rhythmic glossolalia and cosmic synth swirls, ‘We Hereby Declare The African Look’ and ‘Melo Deez from Heab’N’ meanwhile present bizarre, sci-fi groove-outs worthy of either Funkadelic’s most errant, acid soaked excursions or Sun Ra’s most wonkily accessible ‘80s pop crossover work (depending on which way you look at it), whilst the rolling rhythmic backbone provided by South African drummer (and bandleader) Asher Gamedze and lodestone bassist Dr Adam Zanolini is exceptional throughout.

An extraordinary record which will never, ever be played in background anywhere on earth without stepping up and causing trouble, this music catches the mood of a very particular moment in space and time, and burns through it like so much blazing paraffin - a worthy successor to the most furious and misunderstood of ‘70s jazz sides.

 

Matthew Halsall.

And, on completely the other side of the contemporary jazz coin meanwhile, I’ve recently been getting into the work of Manchester-based saxophonist and band leader Matthew Halsall, and, on the basis of the two lengthy tracks available for streaming, his forthcoming double LP ‘Salute to the Sun’ is really going to be a splendid listen.

Basically a warm and toasty tribute to the all-doors-open majesty of late ‘60s spiritual jazz in the Sanders / Alice C. mould (or, perhaps, that precise moment when it hit the more austere European / ECM aesthetic?), there’s a bit of a ‘new age’y’ feel going on here perhaps which may not perhaps be everyone’s cup o’ tea (you know, a meditational, ‘mindfulness’ workshop, translucent Japanese wall hangings kind of vibe). But, as in the work of the mighty, aforementioned Ms Coltrane, this aesthetic seems to find itself verging here into a rich density of sound which remains thoroughly psychedelic, in the best possible way; climbing the damn mountains pictured on the front, not just looking at a picture of ‘em.

Straight in on the opening ‘Joyful Spirits of the Universe’ (yep), a brush across the harp strings (Maddie Herbert), a slowly unwinding melody picked out on flute (Matt Cliffe) and a big, lolloping Cecil McBee bass line (Gavin Barras) let us know exactly where we stand. And, whatever you care to say about the legitimacy of painstakingly recreating the atmos of a musical form which first peaked half a century ago, it’s a place I’m happy to continue standing in for a long, long time to come.

 

Greg Ashley & The Western Playboys.

Neither new, nor of much relevance to the lived experience of most listeners I daresay, this little EP of covers and country standards, knocked out by Greg Ashley and his backing band as a warm up for and/or cool down from laying down some of Ashley’s cynical and misery-wracked original material at some point in the past decade or so, has been pleasing me a great deal recently.

It’s all much as you’d expect really - acoustic pickin’, barrelhouse piano, hangdog rhythm and slurred, Chilton-esque vocal sneer, along with the realisation that Warren Zevon’s strung out cowboy lament ‘Carmelita’ is indeed the absolute perfect song for Ashley to have a bash at - but what can I tell you? I just really like this kind of thing when banged out with just the right quantities of guts, grit and off-hand good cheer, sounding rather like Gram Parsons’ International Submarine Band emerging from about forty years’ worth of bad road, having left their pedal steel player dead in a ditch after a botched coke deal.

Plus it looks as if I’m the only person who has actually bought this on bandcamp thus far, so you’ve gotta love an underdog, right? Yee and indeed fucking Ha.

Labels: Angel Bat Dawid, Greg Ashley, Matthew Halsall, Sam Barton