Dreaming North

What does it sound like?:

`Listen to my canny old folk-songs;
they lilt and tilt into the dank alley,
into the howls of strays.’

(from ‘The Newcastle Sequence’)

DREAMING NORTH was the first fruit of an innovative Northern-based collaboration between jazz musicians and writers: Rick Taylor (trombone), Paul Flush (piano), Keith Armstrong & Graeme Rigby (poetry).

The poems weave together strands of vision and experience; of history and the `men of mark’ that shaped the North of England; of the political and social forces, the industries and ordinary lives that shape it now; images, landscapes and people; rough comedy and emotional strength.

The music, richly textured, constantly plays off the words, off the stories, developing and pursuing ideas, evoking the moods: it draws on a range of popular music forms, on traditional folk melodies, on hymn tunes, even film music. What it creates is something new.

`Climbing up Penshaw Hill
Looking down:
The North laid out
Panoramic.’

(from `Motordreams’)
released October 14, 2019

Rick Taylor (trombone), Paul Flush (piano), Graeme Rigby (poet and writer), Keith Armstrong (poet and writer)

Recorded at Strawberry Studios, Stockport by Richard Scott 1986
‘Ralph Wood’ recorded by John Sylvester, Cluny Studio, Newcastle.

A taster:

What does it all *mean*?

The album has now been remastered from the original pressing and is available via Bandcamp for as little or as much as you fancy! Remastered from the original LP in memory of Rick Taylor who died in June 2019.

Goes well with…

A large G&T and somewhere you can listen in peace.

Release Date:

Available now – https://fullcircle1986.bandcamp.com/album/dreaming-north

Might suit people who like…

Poetry with their music (or music with tier poetry) and a sense of the past

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