Past Present (Tone Poems Across Time)
by Mark de Clive-Lowe
One of the generation of young jazz players in the 1990s influenced by hip-hop – alongside Nathan and Joel Haines, Freebass, the New Loungehead and others – keyboard player/composer Mark de Clive-Lowe was a self-starter who had his own label (Tap, with producer Andrew Dubber) and a passport he got stamped in Japan (where his New Zealand father met his Japanese mother), South Africa, Cuba, Britain, the United States and various places between.
He took jazz to the dancefloor with electronica and scratching (by Manuel Bundy) and, at 50, has a catalogue of more than 30 albums of original material and playing/production credits.
Resident in Tokyo, he now offers a very different instrumental album: “A sonic and intimate journey with my late father Robin de Clive-Lowe top of mind,” he says.
De Clive-Lowe describes his father, who died in 2011, as strict and overbearing but, looking through his archive of photos and letters from when his father was in Japan for 20 years from 1953, he came to see a different person, a young man with a zest for life.
The album, recorded in Los Angeles, is a tribute to the man he didn’t know in synthesiser and keyboard melodies uncoupled from rhythmic constraints.
The 11 succinct pieces are closer to quieter 1970s progressive music of Edgar Froese, Vangelis (before all the soundtracks), Jean-Michel Jarre, Stomu Yamash’ta and other synth pioneers who explored astral-cum-ambient atmospheres.
The most challenging is Acceptance, a taut and shapeshifting piece of roiling keyboard melodies against a backdrop of synth washes which would fit in the original Blade Runner.
A Japanese melody is discreetly discernible in the chiming Forgiveness, and Peace earns its title as an embracing balm of warm waves.
Past Present – trickling to a close with the restful Gratitude – finds Mark de Clive-Lowe in a personal space and, without cheap sentimentality, on “a journey of discovery, catharsis and healing”.
Send A Prayer My Way
by Julien Baker and Torres
Grammy-nominated alt-rock singer-songwriter Baker moves from one acclaimed collaboration (with Lucy Dacus and Phoebe Bridgers in boygenius) to this with New York’s Torres (Mackenzie Scott) for an album of country music. Not a stretch; they have backgrounds in Georgia and Tennessee.
Together they step between mainstream country in the harmonies (The Only Marble I’ve Got Left), culture (Bottom of a Bottle) and imagery (Sugar in the Tank with the escapism of “picking up steam on the off-ramp, getting the hell out of downtown”) and alt-country on the battered emotions of Dirt and the needy truths of Tape Runs Out.
Sylvia looks at the cost on relationships of touring: “Neither of my two minds can decide if I’m at home on the road when I know the road ain’t any kind of home”.
Travel and same-sex relationships – both are in relationships with women, both came from Christian homes – are woven throughout.
The heartbreaking standout is the memory of a lost love, on Tuesday: “Her mama caught wind that her daughter’s friend might be of the wrong persuasion” but asserts, “I’m perfect in my Lord’s eyes”.
A collection of quiet power, empowerment and moving songs.
These albums are available digitally and on vinyl. Baker/Torres also on CD.
