Lou Maxwell Taylor - Cheshire Tree Suite
Track Listing and Lyrics:
The Big Now
Someone Has Stolen My Star
Lost Lake
What Life Is
Cheshire Tree Segue
Cheshire Tree
News of the Flood
Welcome to the Vise
The Ruins of Babylon
New Music for Morris Dancing
The Living and the Dead
Cheshire Tree Reprise
The Unexpected.
Lou Maxwell
Taylor - Cheshire Tree Suite
Das deutschsprachige
Original dieser Besprechung findet man hier...
Vous pouvez trouver ici
une traduction de la critique en français...
You can expect anything when a new CD arrives in the house, particularly if the CD presents as a demo from an artist as yet unknown. I was trying to expect everything possible when I pressed the play key, but I didn't expect such a lucky turn of fate. The most important thing first: This album is a masterpiece, a pearl, a wonderful discovery - I am grateful that the luck befell me to have heard this unusual, singular album, to own this unique album. The music on this album pursues me - no, it is my companion from the very first time I have heard it - even in my dreams, reaching my very own deepest emotions. This is an album that is truly able to create a close connection between the passive listener and active musician, an album that can make these usually separating boundaries insignificant.
Too enthusiastic? No, not too enthusiastic - the music on this album is really wonderful - and my enthusiasm for it is certainly not yet spent.
What makes me so enthusiastic? Well, the great strength of this album lies in its integrity: One never has the impression that Taylor strives to be somebody other than himself. What one hears in Cheshire Tree Suite is original, inimitable, not imitating. It is, first of all, unbelievably beautiful music and this is the result of many individual factors, which were joined in this work in such a wondrous way by Lou Maxwell Taylor: The recording and production are highly transparent and professional, supporting the total concept of the album (as it should be); the melodies on Cheshire Tree Suite are very appealing, never trivial but rather exciting and moving, always appropriate to the song; the arrangements are unusual, original and imitate no large model; they do not need to hide behind large names; the instrumentation is surprising, suitable and always avoids the cliches of progressive rock. Unusual instruments (cello, mandolin, bodhran, clarinet, etc.) and never-heard instruments (sintharmonia button accordian, Tar, Kendang, Dombek,etc.) are used, in order to create a non-standard music. This, if one doesn't want to remain on the surface, cannot be compared to the music the progressive rock-giants, as prog-reviewers easily do. All in all this instrumentation underscores the folk elements of the compositions, which interact with the electronic elements in Cheshire Tree Suite.
The supporting musicians were altogether previously unknown at least to me, yet some of the musicians are comparatively well known: Michael Masley is an eminent cymbalom player and multi-instrumentalist. He has worked with Zakir Hussain, Garbage, Chris Isaak, and Levi Chen, among others, as well as with the great Ry Cooder on the soundtrack to the film Geronimo. The Czech-born Radim Zenkl is an internationally known mandolin player. Barry Cleveland has enjoyed some fame and critical success as a composer and guitarist. He has worked with many musicians, including Michael Plutznick, the guitarist Carl Weingarten, the poet Craig Van Riper, Michael Masley and Michael Manring. Dan Reiter, the cellist that gives some tracks on the Cheshire Tree Suite such a colorful and dreamlike character, has worked with many extraordinary musicians, including Ali Akbar Khan. He is also the Principal Cellist of the Oakland (California) Symphony Orchestra. Barry Cleveland, Mike Masley and Dan Reiter are all members of the ensemble Cloud Chamber. Lygia Ferra, Taylor's duet partner in The Living and the Dead, is active as a solo artist.
All the supporting musicians, the professional and the non-professional, are brilliant; they set the nuances in this work. With but a few brush lines they clarify the purity and beauty of the presented music, but above all it is Taylor gleaming, showing up as the multi-instrumentalist who is responsible for the solid musical basic structure of the album--he lives this music, his playing animates this music, brings it to life. Crowning everything is Taylor's wonderful vocal work, which interprets colorfully the character of the lyrics: expressive, technically skilled and full of warmth - and although I would actually like to avoid comparisons regarding Cheshire Tree Suite, I permit myself to say that sometimes Taylor sings expressively and picturefully like Peter Hammill, then again passionately like Greg Lake, but then - in reality Taylor does not imitate anybody.
No, Taylor's voice is not plagiarized from another, but the perfect vehicle for the expression of his lyrics and oh, what lyrics! Artful, full allusions, full wordplays, at times highly transparent and unique, then in the next line mystical, relating to the previous. These are lyrics which one would like to study (or have to study, although I have not had a chance not to do it)- lyrics which one has to explore, because they do not reveal everything, they do not want to reveal everything. These are lyrics full of complex elaborations and poetic talents, the intended meaning of which may remain locked to the listener, but which on the other hand wake associations in the listener, creating a subjective reality, which in turn allows this album quickly to become a personal album.
I would not like to bore the bent reader now at all with the single analysis of the pieces. Only the last note is permitted to me that I am almost enchanted by that wonderful duet with Lygia Ferra, The Living and the Dead, a piece that indeed can pull one into its spell, and all that I said before about the album generally applies to this breath-robbing high point in particular.
Cheshire Tree Suite
has been released by quiXote music.
Check the quiXote-
Website for worldwide ordering or drop an eMail
to the quiXote staff for details.
You can also contact Lou Maxwell Taylor through eMail.
Last update 01/27/02
Review & translation © 1999 by Sal Pichireddu.
The Cheshire Tree pages © 1999- 2002 by
Sal Pichireddu except where otherwise noticed.