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‘Sunset Cavaliers’ Colin Harper

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What does it sound like?:

see comments below

What does it all *mean*?

Not a clue

Goes well with…

This is a very utilitarian album and I can speak from experience that it works in any of the following scenarios – walking the dogs, painting the kitchen, background whilst working from home, up close and personal late at night listening with a cold glass of Sauvignon

Release Date:

Might suit people who like…

Bert Jansch, Irish folk, ECM style jazz, John Martyn, Ryley Walker, acoustic guitar and all places in-between

3

Comments

  1. As already posted by the man himself this is the new album from our very own @Colin H. I’ve had a copy for a week now and felt it merited a ‘formal’ review on The Afterword. As a fellow recording artists of, dare I say, the ‘non-professional’ variety and knowing the blood, sweat and tears that goes into these projects I really love to hear what my peers are up to. So, without seeming to be damning ‘Sunset Cavaliers’ with faint praise, I would say this is probably the best album of that ilk that I’ve heard for a very long time. I will temper that by saying that Colin has managed to secure the talents of Chris Spedding, two members of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Bert fucking Jansch (not exactly a level playing field is it !) although those guys do not dominate proceedings and indeed it is Colin’s own guitar that sits firmly at the heart of most of these tracks. For a writer he is one shit-hot player.
    I believe the intention was to create music inspired by the recent biographies and various other projects that he’s has been involved in of late and I think that objective has been managed in very personal and original way. Stylistically it oozes early 70’s folk influenced artists – think ‘Bless The Weather’ era John Martyn (sans vocals) but with added roots and jazz inflections. At times I could also hear, in the open chords and fingerstyle pulls and hammers, the warm and woody buzz and burr of a Michael Hedges or William Ackerman. Ryley Walkers last album ‘Primrose Green’ also came to mind now and then. It is deceptively easy on the ear but it’s certainly not prissy – tracks like ‘Steven Kindler’ kick up the tempo with intricate violin and burbling synth lines and on ‘Blues for the Mahavishnu’ Chris Spedding’s typically angular guitar solo briefly threatens to take the roof off. There is variety throughout – the Ash’s Andy Powell duelling with uilleann pipes, guitar duets a la Bert and John, gorgeous ECM style flugelhorn and even three actual songs which again keep to the nostalgic footprint with ‘Three Syllable Time’ having a lovely Bridget St John vibe.
    This album is so good it can take a minor gripe or two which is that I think it might have worked better to have those vocal tracks spread across the disc rather than all stuck towards the back end – oh and maybe make the Radio Edit of ‘Blues for Mahavishnu’ as an ‘added track’.

    So there you have it ‘Sunset Cavaliers’ by Colin Harper, warmly recommended and an early contender for one of my albums of the year.

  3. As mentioned above my copy arrived today.
    I slipped the disc into my deck and settled back to have a listen whilst taking a break from my easel. I fully intended to go back to work afterwards. I have however found myself listening to it twice so this tea break has become somewhat extended.
    It’s good. Very good. Now if I can bring myself to stop listening to it I might get some more painting done!

  4. I’m very flattered indeed, lads – thrilled that people like that. Really, thank you! I’m particularly thrilled that you think some of it redolent of ‘Primrose Green’, Filemeister…

    Adele from Wookalily very kindly put together a video for ‘Three Syllable Time’, using images of featured singer Sarah McQuaid (another of my musical faves in her own right). Here it is:

    The Hubester PM-ed me asking for a retail link. Here’s one (available on Feb 19th), download or physical copy (with booklet):

  6. Yes I too have a copy and love it. I subscribe to Feedback’s comparisons, and for some reason it brings Ian Carr’s Nucleus to mind, even though it really doesn’t sound like it other than the aforementioned flugalhorn.

    I’d also like to mention Colin’s previous “Titanium Flag” which I think is brilliant. Lonely windswept icy landscapes chill every note, and the instrumentation is as spare, sharp and beautiful as a lonely icicle. No YouTube clips available but here it is on Spotty:

    • Thank you Twang! Being mentioned in the same breath as Ian Carr’s nucleus is unbelievable, as I’m sure you can imagine!

      I’ll admit it, i love Titanium Flag myself. I have a feeling, six years distant from recording it, that it is the best thing I will do, music-wise. Planets aligning, in my own small way – people involved, state of mind at the time etc. I have no confidence as a musician – I’ve almost never played live, unlike yourself, Feedback, El Hombre, DisappointingBob et al – plus I’ve always been queasy about being someone who has had periods of writing more or less professionally ABOUT music (1994-2001, 2012-now) – the whole poacher/gamekeeper thing. But the world has changed. There are no rules, no barriers any more. Anyone who wants to can write/publish (online) and anyone who wants to can make a record (and put it online). The ceiling has shrunk but the landscape is flat and the horizon endless. Plus I’m probably more comfortable in my own skin now. Hey ho…

      There’s no YouTube on TF, but there are a couple of Vimeo clips. Here’s ‘Six Days North’ with some borrowed imagined footage of great Auks…

    • Spurred on by Twang’s recommendation I bought (yes, bought) Titanium Flag from those nice iTunes people (can’t be doing with Spotify except to have a quick listen to something to see if its worth having) and am absolutely knocked out by it. It’s so different from just about anything else and I love the way it works around that great theme. A fantastic guitar sound as well – loved it all round. To me it has the feel of Keith Jarrett about it, which is nothing but a good thing – I’d love to know how much was improvised and how much was written?

      Bring on the new one

      • Wow! Thank you Ainsley (and, as ever, Twang)…

        As to what was improvised and written, well… ‘Six Days North’ had written ‘ascending’ parts for strings and those were built on the structure of the guitar part, played by me to a click track, including all the spaces, because I had in mind the rolling sound world of drums, clarinet, etc. So the drums/percussion and clarinet were given free reign to add atmosphere.

        ‘Years of Regret’ was built up similarly – my motif guitar part plus huge spaces, to a click, and then my second guitar part (in the spaces, and sometimes in harmony/overlapping with the riff), totally improvised, as was Cormac’s piano. ‘Frozen Ocean’, the third part of that opening trilogy, was entirely improvised in one go by Cormac with me giving a few pointers on style. He really is an astounding musician as well as being a ‘wizard of sound’ at production!

        I had home-demoed the first two of the above, so had a fair idea what the end result could be. I home demoed ‘To Sail For Eternity’ as well, though that one was scary – I had a structure but within that, about 40% of it was to be improvised and then 100% of the second guitar part was to be improvised. I think the second part took two or three passes before it magically slotted into place. Phew…

        ‘Novaya Zemlya’ was an amazing accident. I wanted to develop the motif heard in the first three pieces and change it from ‘icy wastes’ to atomic test zone – spooky serenity becoming tension. I was home demoing it and trying to get it together and then Phil Jones, all round good guy and ex of Quintessence, happened to post me a couple of his solo releases, including one single-piece epic called ‘Meditation Om Chant’. I was playing this and suddenly heard, in my head, Phil’s didgeridoo drone and chanting basso profundo working perfectly with my ‘NZ’ idea. I literally played a CDR of my demo in tandem with Phil’s CD on another machine and they miraculously blended, fitted like a glove – the sound, the pace, the ebb and flow of the voices. Phil happily gave his permission for me to use it.

        By this point Cormac, who was fitting me in at mates rates around various other studio clients and, from memory, a high-pressure TV MD-ing gig that was going badly wrong, was pretty fed up with my ‘progressive rock’ direction – he couldn’t understand why I had a bunch of songs that he liked yet was focused on these exasperating instrumentals which NOBODY would like – and suggested forcefully that I record the rest with his sidekick Bernard instead…

        So I recorded ‘Novaya Zemlya’ with Bernard (who I don’t think ‘got it’ either, but who was mellow enough to press the relevant buttons and programme the right rhythm pattern). There was a fair degree of improv with NZ, but being very tightly wound and with three or four different guitar parts overlaid, with different sounds, it had to be very precise as well – a case of patching that one together a few bits at a time, I think, rather than one pass per guitar.

        I’d come up with the rolling chord progression, with room for movement in and around it, for ‘The Last Place on Earth’ on a digital keyboard at my then place of work (a music college), and brought my digitial 8-track in to demo it against a rhythm pattern, overlaying a keyboard melody over the top. I repeated this in the studio, using one of Cormac’s keyboards (I think this was before he ‘banned’ me for a while…). I ‘played’ various additional bits of exlectronic percussion fills over the track as live overbubs and asked the splendid Linley Hamilton to come in and improvise a flugelhorn part, loosely following the suggestions of my wispy melody lines but going with his much higher muse – and he did! I think he did maybe two takes and we used the best bits of each – another astounding musician.

        ‘Titanium Flag’, the title track, was almost an out of body experience. I can’t really explain it. I am, honestly, a very limited musician – with very little experience of playing live with other musicians, and also easily the worst musician per se among any I choose to record with (!) in studios. And yet with this piece, although I knew the kind of thing I was hoping to get, I had had no way of demoing it or knowing if I could even play what I imagined in my head. I assembled ‘Ulster Scots’ Jim on drums (through the glass in a separate room) and Cormac on Hammond (I think he was just about speaking to me again by now) and me on electric guitar, both in the same room, and maybe played Jim the riff once – Cormac having heard it before on ‘Six Days North’ et al – and we just started playing, with the red light on, at full volume, no rehearsal at all. And 12 minutes later we stopped. That was it: total improvisation, once. It had felt like about 3 minutes to me, and I was sure I’d played terribly. And yet I hear it now and have no idea how I did it. Hearing Cormac’s playing, it’s amazing to know that he has virtually no affinity with progressive rock, isn’t it? We overdubbed the waves and seagulls (they’d forgotten to turn up that day…).

        ‘Rachelle’ was totally written. I demoed a very similar version, the only difference being a lead guitar part where the clarinet is in the studio version. I wrote the clarinet part out for my pal Rachelle, worked out on a piano, and she played it – sorted.

        ‘Passing Away’ is the only piece that predated the TF sessions – but it felt right for it. I had created it/’composed’ it using a borrowed synth and a 4 track cassette machine in the late 80s; in the mid 2000s I had a (much cleverer) friend transcribe the four synth parts for strings and had some of my cronies at the music college record it for me.

        I’m sure you’re sorry you asked now!

  7. Just to add my voice to the clamour – I’ve had my copy for a week or two and it’s already gathered more plays than some of the five-star-reviewed CDs bought on the back of Mojo/Uncut reviews which have been acquired in the same period. As has been mentioned, Titanium Flag is also a gem – when I first heard that I found myself staring at the CD deck and frowning to myself. How can music this good have been made by people I sort of actually know? Crumbs, there was I thinking all these musicians were a different species – turns out they are normal people too, they are just really talented. Whoodathunkit?

    “Sunset Cavaliers” is a truly cracking album – at the moment I prefer it to it’s earlier sibling – one that is revealing more with each listen, and I’d like to propose its adoption by the house as the official AW soundtrack to the Spring of 2016.

    We are in really talented company here folks – if I can drag Colin’s disc out of the office player for a while I’ve also got Twang’s latest here to immerse myself in next! I heard an early mix of Twang’s and that was already great (pssst – spoiler alert – there’s one particularly killer track I utterly love) – the final article has been further polished I’m told, and I’m saving it for a proper weekend listen.

    *bows in abject ‘not worthy’ mode to the players in our midst*

    • Awwww shucks. In truth I hated the mixes you heard which were done by a local studio. It was your constructive criticism which encouraged me to go back and fix it myself. ?

  8. Lordy yes. Twang’s opus is equally fabulous. I’ve been listening to it and little else except for Moonshine by Bert Jansch, The Attic Tapes from John Renbourn, The latest Lucinda Williams and Adore Life by Savages. Sunset Cavaliers has now been added to this fine company.

    • Thank you Hannah. My memory, though, is far from splendid. I drove to Dublin tonight to see the great Martin Hayes (on violin on one of the tracks on SC) in ‘an audience with’ at the House of Lords (no, I never knew there was an Irish one, either…). I was a day late 🙁

      • Hopefully so, Ainsley. I’ve left all that to the Market Square Records digital availability wizard, but if it’s not available on iTunes come Feb 19th, I’ll want to know why. It’ll be available on Spotify too, so no-one need spend any money… But it’s a nice digipak and booklet, honest… 🙂

  13. If anyone’s interested, with 10 mins to spare, here’s something from Radio Ulster last night. Punk legend Mickey Bradley very kindly asked me onto his show to talk about the album. Luckily he didn’t ask the question I had most been feariing: “Progressive rock in 2016 – why?” It was good fun, though.

    Starts around 17:40 in…
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ztpg3#play

  16. My copy came on Monday – yesterday I had quite a bit of driving and played it 3 times back to back – Colin I don’t do that with very many discs. You are in exalted company with those that do get the same treatment. Very very pleasant and I am more than impressed. Well done to you.

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