King Crimson, Islands (1971)

When I think of silence as a part of sound, I often think of this specific album.  Its “silence” was in fact the hiss of a pirated tape.

For a while in the early 1970’s, I remember being able to buy 8-track copies of “popular” albums at the grocery store.  They resembled the early “generic” food products, with the plain white label and black printing.  (I remember how compelling those white cans looked, with only the word “BEER” on the side.)  This was before changes in copyright law of the mid-70’s, and the tapes were simply recorded from the albums and sold, presumably always without permission or payment.

I probably only ever had a small handful of these, and now I only remember one of them.  I had picked up Islands by King Crimson, not yet knowing anything about them at that point, but finding myself intrigued by both the band name and the album title.

Now, this was still very early in my awakening to prog.  Imagine this naive young American teen from rural Ohio, listening to “Ladies of the Road.”  Then listening to it again.  Then again.  As many critics have suspected, it probably didn’t help with my intensely awkward, ignorantly misogynistic adolescent confrontations with my sexuality.  But oh man, that saxophone entrance!

I think it was at least a week before I really listened to the whole album with the same level of attention that I gave to LOTR.  (If I use that abbreviation, it will probably drive Brad Birzer crazy, which will be totally worth it.)  The second song on the album that began to reverberate deeply was “Song of the Gulls.”  What’s up with this?  All strings?  Like a “classical” piece?

Remember how those 8-tracks worked?  If I remember right, at that point I could just listen to the third section of the tape over and over.

By the time the entire album had me entwined in its tendrils, I had repented and bought a legitimate copy.  Removed the shrink wrap, so there was no band name or title, and it was another one of THOSE covers: Peter Sinfield’s original “Islands” painting.  My third (second legitimate) copy eventually had the Trifid Nebula cover.

Once I had immersed myself in the remainder of the album’s tracks, I began to feel the importance of pauses, of “silence” (I would learn a bit later from John Cage the relativity of “silence”).  It was this album, as much as any early “prog” album, that got me to notice the role of silence in music, of “negative space” in aural texture.

It was also a bit later when I went back to the earlier King Crimson, once I had made the connection that this was where Greg Lake had come from.  The transitional character of Islands gave its music greater depth for me.  It prepared the way for the coming adventures with Wetton, Bruford, and Cross, which are actually my favorite Crimson albums overall.  But Islands remains my point of entrance, and so inescapably a sort of benchmark for my sojourn with Robert Fripp.

Listen again to Islands, and notice the surrounding sea.

 

 

 

As a long time Blue Nile fan, and in particular their wonderful, evocative, rain-swept masterpiece that is ‘Hats’, their later recordings were something of a disappointment as Paul Buchanan moved towards an almost cabaret style of pared down and rather drab songs seeming to rely on past glories. Their earlier recordings told micro-stories of moving ordinariness of wet, dreary Glasgow streets and city life in winter with characters struggling against day to day life.

One the best pieces of music bar none to listen to whilst driving along a city street, in the dark, in the rain is ‘Headlights on the Parade’ – I could quite simply have this on repeat for hours on end it’s that good.

‘The Downtown Lights’ is a must-listen with the stunning semi-spoken section driven along by the synths and electro-drum beats a real highlight: 

The neon’s and the cigarettes

Rented rooms and rented cars

The crowded streets, the empty bars

Chimney tops and trumpets 

The golden lights, the loving prayers

The colored shoes, the empty trains

I’m tired of crying on the stairs

The downtown lights

 

What made me notice Steve Adey’s magnificent album several years ago was the producer – none other than Calum Malcolm who mastered the Blue Nile albums.  I’m a bit of a sucker for good production and have often followed the producer rather than the artist.  Daniel Lanois being a good example as I remember the fantastic sound of the Joshua Tree by U2 which he produced.  He then added the same magic to Emmylou Harris’ ‘The Wrecking Ball’ which led me onto his own albums and a brief sojourn with Creole music.  The way music trails twist and turn and take you down, sometimes blind, alleys never ceases to amaze me.

The other startling thing about ‘All Things Real’ is the similarity to the Blue Nile sound, not surprising considering the producer, and in particular the vocals.  Steve Adey’s voice has the same timbre as Paul Buchanans but also has a deeper warmth – both sharing the same knack for extracting every ounce of emotion from each note.

‘All Things Real’ is a beautifully produced piece of work. The sound is very ‘close up’, you can hear fingers scrape on guitar strings, you can hear the air in the harmonium, you can hear breathing between words – you can almost hear the creak of wood in the chairs as the musicians shuffle around whilst recording.

The album has a very organic feel as though it was laid down with only a few takes,  if not just one take in some cases, and it resonates with a sombre, seriousness that to some ears could come across as maudlin.  To my ears it is beautiful, deep and rewarding.

There are elements of Talk Talk in the hushed drama and great swathes of the Blue Nile in the vocals and production qualities. But the overall feeling is of high quality, structured songs put together with absolute love and care.

Take the two cover versions that bestride this album – ‘I See a Darkness’ and ‘Shelter From the Storm’.  Adey does not just play it by the book, he strips these two classics down, re-builds them and makes them entirely his own.

Dylans ‘Shelter From the Storm’ takes on epic proportions as Adey slows it down to an almost funereal pace with each verse adding extra layers as the drama of the song unfolds – at one point you can sense him almost spitting out the words in barely controlled emotion.  This is a stunning track.

A re-working of Will Oldham’s ‘I See a Darkness’ is no less stunning and is my personal favourite on the album – a brooding, dark masterpiece that is quite frankly a huge improvement on the original and also on the Johnny Cash version. This is a sweeping and emotional tour-de-force and being the second track on the album makes you wonder how it can go on. The power is quite intense as he sings …..

 

         Many times

            We’ve been out drinking

            Many times we’ve shared our thoughts

            But did you ever, ever notice

            The kind of thoughts I had

 

Well go on it does – there is not a weak track.  There is a rolling version of a sea-shanty with ‘The Lost Boat Song’ which carries on the mournful feel throughout the album and there are also very intense moments of simple personal feelings, ‘Tonight’ being a good example.

 

Tonight

This very silent night

I give it all to you

I render it to you

Through love and war and hate

And tomorrow I must fight

Amazed and bleeding child

I send my love to you

 

This is one of those albums I find hard to categorise when someone says ‘what type of music is it ?’. In many respects it is folk, with the same home-spun vibe as, say, King Creole & Jon Hopkins’ ‘Diamond Mine’.  In other respects it has the sweeping panorama of earlier Blue Nile which is definitely not folk.

The best thing is to simply recommend it and let you, the listener, decide which, if any category it sits.

I hope you are rewarded as much as I have been over the last six years.