For not the first time on this journey I've come across an album that
leaves me scratching my head. I'm not sure if this release was aimed at organ
enthusiasts (there's a note in the top left corner that says 'Electronic Organ
Series') or for ordinary holidaymakers looking for a souvenir of Blackpool*. If it's the latter then they're in for a bit of a disappointment; though that
cover montage suggests you'll be getting two sides of a Wurlitzer merrily blasting out
'Beside The Seaside' and the like, that is not what this is about. At all.
What we do have is a curate's egg of musical fragments and jazz standards played entirely on an electric organ with the only accompaniment being provided by the pre-set rhythms of that machine. I'm happy to confess I don't know much about organs, and I know even less about the Technics U90 that the back cover informs me that Graham is playing on this, but I do know that the sounds creeping from these grooves are very similar to the sounds that have piped the mourners into the chapel at every funeral or cremation I've ever attended. Low and mournful, the organ sound on this casts a gloomy spell over everything it touches in a way that stands in stark contrast to the postcard sleeve.
This is a world where 'Stars And Stripes Forever' rubs up against 'The Blue Danube', 'Lullaby Of Broadway', 'Tyrolean Whistler' and 'S'Wonderful' with no hint of rhyme or reason as to why these pieces should make good bedfellows and it suggests (to me) that Graham is just playing whatever comes to mind rather than following a theme. True, you'd need to be really determined and/or a miserable bastard to make the more jazzy pieces like 'Jeepers Creepers' or 'I Got Rhythm' anything but upbeat, and these takes do have a vague, seaside swing about them, but it's the sepia tinged feel of a rainy day in November rather than high summer, and much like watching a circus elephant balancing on one leg, the surface jollity is still tinged in a sadness that's as deep seated in this album as rising damp in a wall.
In fairness, the downbeat tone actually works quite well on some of the pieces - for example, the sampled bird songs and die straight playing on the standard 'Morning Has Broken' could have reduced it to hackwork personified, but Graham plays it slow as a crawl and fills it with the dread of what the new day will bring instead of the hope of a new beginning that's suggested by Eleanor Farjeon's original lyric. In other parts, simple melodies swirl in a wash of notes that almost puts me in mind of some of Edgar Froese's mid-seventies output, 'Epsilon In Malaysian Pale' maybe. Well for a few seconds anyway.
At the end of it all though, I have to report that Graham sounds like he's playing in a dark and dreary place, the resident organist at an empty dancehall at midnight where the only punters are the ghosts of better days dancing under a mirror ball that stopped spinning sometime during the blitz. Frankly, I don't wish I was there at all.
* David Graham, I'm informed by the back cover, plays seasons at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. I hope he played something a bit more lively than this, though maybe that's why that title is posed as an incredulous statement rather than a question. We can't say we weren't warned.
What we do have is a curate's egg of musical fragments and jazz standards played entirely on an electric organ with the only accompaniment being provided by the pre-set rhythms of that machine. I'm happy to confess I don't know much about organs, and I know even less about the Technics U90 that the back cover informs me that Graham is playing on this, but I do know that the sounds creeping from these grooves are very similar to the sounds that have piped the mourners into the chapel at every funeral or cremation I've ever attended. Low and mournful, the organ sound on this casts a gloomy spell over everything it touches in a way that stands in stark contrast to the postcard sleeve.
This is a world where 'Stars And Stripes Forever' rubs up against 'The Blue Danube', 'Lullaby Of Broadway', 'Tyrolean Whistler' and 'S'Wonderful' with no hint of rhyme or reason as to why these pieces should make good bedfellows and it suggests (to me) that Graham is just playing whatever comes to mind rather than following a theme. True, you'd need to be really determined and/or a miserable bastard to make the more jazzy pieces like 'Jeepers Creepers' or 'I Got Rhythm' anything but upbeat, and these takes do have a vague, seaside swing about them, but it's the sepia tinged feel of a rainy day in November rather than high summer, and much like watching a circus elephant balancing on one leg, the surface jollity is still tinged in a sadness that's as deep seated in this album as rising damp in a wall.
In fairness, the downbeat tone actually works quite well on some of the pieces - for example, the sampled bird songs and die straight playing on the standard 'Morning Has Broken' could have reduced it to hackwork personified, but Graham plays it slow as a crawl and fills it with the dread of what the new day will bring instead of the hope of a new beginning that's suggested by Eleanor Farjeon's original lyric. In other parts, simple melodies swirl in a wash of notes that almost puts me in mind of some of Edgar Froese's mid-seventies output, 'Epsilon In Malaysian Pale' maybe. Well for a few seconds anyway.
At the end of it all though, I have to report that Graham sounds like he's playing in a dark and dreary place, the resident organist at an empty dancehall at midnight where the only punters are the ghosts of better days dancing under a mirror ball that stopped spinning sometime during the blitz. Frankly, I don't wish I was there at all.
* David Graham, I'm informed by the back cover, plays seasons at the Blackpool Tower Ballroom. I hope he played something a bit more lively than this, though maybe that's why that title is posed as an incredulous statement rather than a question. We can't say we weren't warned.
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