the times | Friday August 7 2020 1GT 9
music reviews
There are shades of the Cocteau
Twins in this debut from a young
quartet, from the euphoric builds
and dream pop haziness to Catrin
Vincent’s remarkable voice, which
sounds like a medieval nun in
the throes of religious ecstasy,
but transplanted to 21st-century
south London.
There are catchy moments (Fell in
Love With the City) and introspective
reflections on isolation (Only Rain),
and the whole thing is tied together
beautifully by themes of growing up
and trying to work out where you fit
in the world. Epic, yet suffused with a
sense of personality, atmospheric but
filled with big pop hooks, this is
an exciting, unusual debut.Another Sky
I Slept on the Floor
Fiction
{{{{(Having
helped to
invent heavy
metal in 1968
and come up
with some of
the world’s
greatest riffs
along the way, Deep Purple have
assured their place in the book of rock.
They even made it into The Guinness
Book of Records as the world’s loudest
band after a 1972 concert at the
Rainbow Theatre in London.
Still led by the singer Ian Gillan,
they have kept to their signature
style of progressive rock augmented
by swirling organs and squealing
guitars on this returning album, but
none of it matches up to the glorious
heaviness of the early days.
“San Francisco, where did you go?”
Gillan asks on the anti-violence
highlight Drop the Weapon, but
it all goes a bit Spinal Tap on the
spoken-word section of the planetary
fable Man Alive. “The wisest guys in
the evolution of humanity became
extinct,” Gillan intones.
You can imagine the dwarfs
dancing around a miniature
Stonehenge in the background.Deep Purple
Whoosh!
Earmusic
{{(((yDeepPurplehave
Daphne
Guinness
Revelations
Absolute
{{{{(Ground control to planet pop
Daphne Guinness
is truly out of
this world, says
Will Hodgkinson
E
ver since the vast
success of Adele and
Ed Sheeran, rock and
pop stars have sold
themselves on being
men and women of the
people: relatable, flawed,
in possession of at least
one Superdry hoodie. It makes you
long for the days of David Bowie,
Marc Bolan and all those otherworldly
figures who rebelled against the very
concept of normality, and it makes
Daphne Guinness a breath of fresh air.
Best known for her place in the
rarefied world of high fashion, she
has made an album with Bowie’s old
producer Tony Visconti that has an
exotic take on glam rock, disco and
other forms of music that don’t lend
themselves to the sports casual look.
It’s a vibrant, sophisticated delight.
As her name suggests, Guinness
has aristocratic heritage. The daughter
of the British peer Jonathan Guinness
and his artist wife, Suzanne Lisney,
she spent much of her childhood
in a converted monastery in Cadaques
in Spain, where Salvador Dalí was
her neighbour. The artist’s terrifying
wife, Gala, once offered Guinness’s
brother Valentine a Ferrari to
be her lover.
Guinness was about to take a place
at the Guildhall and train for a life as
a lieder singer when at 19 she met and
married the son of a Greek shipping
magnate, and spent the next 12 years
bringing up children and living in a
gilded cage of wealthy domesticity.
Only in the late Nineties did she
escape to become a fashion muse,
model and patron, with a signature
black and white hairstyle that appears
to have been modelled on the stout
invented by her illustrious forebear.
It wasn’t until her late forties, after
the deaths of her brother Jasper and
the stylist Isabella Blow and the
designer Alexander McQueen, both
close friends of hers, that Guinness
took up music once more. Now, on herJazz album
Twilight trio musings
by Bill Frisell. Reviewed
at thetimes.co.uk/artsreminiscent of Bowie’s Heroes, on The
Looking Glass Guinness asks, “Where,
oh where am I?” like a modern-day
Alice in Wonderland. It’s fabulous.
“You’ve got nothing mystic in your
shade of lipstick,” Guinness announces
on the Euro-balladry of Other People’s
Problems, sending up fashion’s
unfailing ability to take itself far too
seriously, while Blow Up sounds like
Kraftwerk by way of a Paris catwalk
show. There are comparisons here to
Grace Jones, another former model
who became a singer, and touches of
Bryan Ferry’s ironic, art-school vision
of luxury for Roxy Music, but really,
Guinness is out there on her own.
After so many ordinary boys and
girls, it’s a relief to have a pop star
who appears to have been beamed
down from another planet.third album, she has found her voice
and it is quite unlike anything else.
A cover image by David LaChapelle
of Guinness as an angel gives an
idea of what to expect: a fantastical
soundtrack to a disco at the end
of the world. Soaring orchestration,
hand claps, the kind of expansive
production favoured by French stars
such as Serge Gainsbourg and Michel
Polnareff, and Guinness’s cut-glass
vocals make this a glamorous record.
It has its tongue in its cheek, though,
and a general message that, however
hard life might be, moaning about
things is awfully vulgar. “The world
is falling to pieces,” she announces,
somewhat gleefully, over the disco
strings of Permission to Dance, “so
let’s be space cadets... Let’s have
fun.” Against an oscillating droneDaphne
Guinnesspop
rewarding, but there are exceptions.
James Blachly’s American forces,
topped by the vigorous bass-baritone
Dashon Burton, do their best with
Ethel Smyth’s last important work,
The Prison (1930), a vocal “symphony”
tethered to philosophical free verse
by Henry Brewster, high in ambition
and mediocrity. Scattered minutes,
mostly orchestral, are certainly
appealing, but the hour-long spread,
which is peppered with words such as
“lastingness” and “divine vultures”,
is fatally lacking in stylistic cohesion
and momentum.
I’m usually fond of the feisty Smyth,
but here it would have been better to
let sleeping dogs snore.
Geoff BrownP
eople who create an
ensemble out of a harp,
clarinet, double-bass and
soprano are never going to
find existing repertoire
plopping into their laps. The music
must be commissioned, arranged or
created on the wing. And that’s how
the Hermes Experiment, right, like it.
Founded in 2013, this British group
have released an enticing calling card,
advertising the skills of individual
musicians and the liveliness and
variety of Britain’s composing scene.
Who could wish for a better first
track than Emily Hall’s I am happy
living simply? One minute and 44
seconds of delight, this little song,
never as simple or happy as it seems,The Hermes
Experiment
Here We Are
Delphian
{{{{(James Blachly
The Prison
Chandos
{{(((immediately shows off the ensemble’s
frontline asset: the vivacious soprano
voice of Héloïse Werner, who
pounces on individual notes
and words with a tiger’s
tenacity and a kitten’s
glee. The other
musicians are equally
crucial in the album’s
tapestry of sounds:
the harpist Anne
Denholm, marvellously
incisive; Marianne
Schofield, growling
beautifully on the
double-bass; Oliver Pashley,
mercurial monarch of the clarinet.
As for the music, nothing is arid,
much is juicy. Standout pieces includeGiles Swayne’s Chansons dévotes et
poissonneuses, nimble settings of
playful French poetry; Josephine
Stephenson’s expressive
musings on love and war
(Between the War and
Yo u); and the Soviet
machine aesthetic of
Joel Rust’s Pack of
Orders. No part of this
album slips into a rut;
nor the music making.
I may not be ready for
an ensemble of tuba,
viola, counter-tenor and
bagpipes, but the Hermes
Experiment? Definitely.
Digging up forgotten works from
British musical history can beer, who
notes
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shley,
the clarinetplayful Fren
Stephen
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Experiment? DefiAn experimental ensemble creates a tapestry of sound
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