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Speaker 2Tim, let's go over to Germany. It's a big year for Kraut Rock. Germany calling. We've finally arrived at the point where we're going to talk about my favorite album of all time. What is that, I hear you asking? Boney M's debut. Not Boney M's debut. Was that 1972? Because it's not on the list. If it was, it should be on the list too. I think it was later. Tangerine Dream. Tangerine Dream Zeit is my famous sleep. Infamously, maybe not famously, maybe nobody knows out there. I think a lot of people know out there by now that Zeit is the album that I most often, it's one of those things, how do you pick your favorite album of all time? Depends on the day. This is the album I most often come down on when it comes to choosing a favorite album of all time. Why do I like it so much? I love ambient music. Always loved ambient music. To me, this is the beginning of ambient music. Whatever Brian Eno says. Ambient music existed long before. I don't think he says that, to be fair to him. Other people say that about him. Ambient music existed for a long time before Brian Eno. Going back to some classical music, obviously, but also artists like Pink Floyd, reducing music to texture. Classical composers like Karlheinz Stockhaus and John Cage, famously 4 Minutes and 30 Through. The ultimate ambient piece of music is for silence. Zeit is music which just hangs in the air. Changes the way I relate to the space I'm in when I listen to it. And I think that's what good ambient music should do. And there's a sense of otherness about it that I never get tired of. It's quite primitive, you know, recording wise. It's four, just so people know, it's a double album with just four side long pieces. Each piece has its own kind of character. But at the same time, they all form part of this giant cosmic suite. Of a cloud of music. There's no melody. There's no rhythm. There's very little in the way of what you would call traditional harmony. It just floats. It just hangs in the room. It's still my favorite ambient album of all time. And I think it is the album I can never tire of listening to. For that reason, Tangerine Dream Zeit is my favorite album. But Tim, what's your take on Zeit?
Speaker 3It's all right. I like it. I like it. I like early Tangerine Dream. I prefer it when they've signed to Virgin and Phaedra, Rubicon.
Speaker 2Love them too.
Speaker 3And I actually really like some of the early 80s Tangerine Dream. So I really like, you know, I think Tangerine Dream first 15 years or so and the many shifts they make in that period.
Speaker 2But Zeit, even with your preferences. Yeah. Acknowledge Zeit occupies a unique place, even in their own catalog, doesn't it?
Speaker 3I like it. But I think even in this year, this is a period. This is a period when that kind of almost organ, drone, proto-ambient music, you're hearing it in Klaus Schulz's Ehrlich, for example, as well. Cluster 2. Cluster 2. I think Popol Vuh probably were experimenting with this sort of style as well.
Speaker 2In their garden for hours.
Speaker 3So I guess I feel it's part of that whole German scene. It's not an album alone. It's an album that's actually, it's got
Speaker 2a few comfortable
Speaker 3bedfellows.
Speaker 2It is an album. You're right. There are other, there are other people that are attempting similar things. So Klaus Schulz's first solo album this year, which I really like, amazing, amazing. As you pointed out, also Popol Vuh, their second album this year, excuse my German, in den Garten Pharaos, Cluster 2, second Cluster album, first one they made as a duo. I think, no, maybe the second one they made as a duo, cut that bit out. These are cut from a similar cloth in the sense they are reducing music to pure, a kind of cosmic, almost like a cloud of music.
Speaker 3Yeah. I mean, it's tone as much. I mean, it's tone, it's sound, it's texture. And one of the things that's kind of interesting as well is that some of them, like, you know, the Klaus Schulz album for one, does sound as if some of these, as if it's used primitive synthesizers, but it hasn't. You know, a lot of these albums are using organs through effects units. Yes. And I think with the Klaus Schulz, he's almost got this kind of gorgeous Mellotron texture on. The album. And it's actually, he's got a recording of an orchestra in reverse. That's right. So what they're doing is kind of using the studio in fascinating ways to preempt an era of synthesis and sampling.
Speaker 2A lot of them are using echo, echo, echo to create texture. So feeding an orchestra through an echo, it just creates this big kind of wash of ambient textural sound. Yeah. Zeit for me is a cut above all of those. There's a sense of otherness about it. The way the album starts with these seven minutes of just four cellists playing together, allowing themselves to go very gradually in and out of tune with each other, almost like a Lamont Young sort of thing is very unique. None of the other records have that. Also, the appearance of Florian Freak from Popover. So there is a little bit of synthesizer on this album, the guest appearance by Florian Freak from Popover, who famously in Germany was the only guy that owned the big Moog at the time. So he was the guy that came into play on Zeit for Tangerine Dream. A lot of use of glissando guitar, which is playing the guitar by basically putting it through a lot of echo and stroking the strings with.
Speaker 3Well, I think on the I think that, you know, they gradually very much come into their own sound and that particular German sound as well. And what I kind of find interesting is we're going to discuss kind of music on the continent during this year is that in Italy, it seems that ELP, Van de Graaff, Genesis, King Crimson have had an enormous influence on the underground bands. Germany, it's a different set. You can hear Pink Floyd to an extent, Velvet Underground, but also very strongly contemporary classical music. So Stockhausen is a huge influence. And that I find sort of fascinating that different countries almost had different sets of influences shaping them because you can hear that kind of Velvets, Floyd, Stockhausen, Lamont Young in Tangerine Dream, in Klaus Schultz, in Cluster, in the Neu album. You can hear it in different ways and they reflect it back differently.
Speaker 2Absolutely. And I think that's why I'm much more drawn. What I've always been very much drawn to, quote unquote, kraut rock is because Floyd being my favorite band. There's a lot of that DNA in these groups. And when you take a band like Cannes, and let's talk about the Cannes album from this year, one of their greatest records, again, I don't know how you say it, Ej Bam Yassi. That whole kind of avant-garde classical composition approach to constructing music through tape editing is a big part. It's a big part of Cannes. Now, as I understand it, Cannes never recorded their albums on multitrack. They recorded direct to stereo. Okay. And then edited the stereo master tape to create these pieces. In the castle. In their castle, yeah. So there's a sense of a lot of it just being improvised to tape. And then a bit like Tao Macero did with Miles. I was about to say, very Bitches Brew, yeah. Yeah, creating the structure and the logical flow of the music, not through the performance, but through the way it was. Edited subsequently. And I think Holger Chukai was the guy that got most involved in the tape editing. Holger Chukai, who I think had studied with some of the classical, maybe Stockhausen, I know Ermin Schmidt certainly had. So they come from that tradition of avant-garde classical music. They've fallen in love with rock and roll music. They've discovered Pink Floyd. You're right. There isn't that sense of the symphonic side, pseudo-romantic classical, operatic side of progressive rock, which you hear in the Italian bands. And which I'm. I'm personally much less a fan of. So for me, I'm very much drawn to the krautrock. Some very subversive sounds on the Cannes album, and also the Faust. Two albums from Faust this year, one in conjunction with Tony Conrad, which directly references Lamont Young in the title Outside the Dream Syndicate, which is basically. This is Drone music. This is Drone music.
Speaker 3Drone is very big in German albums this year, isn't it? And I wonder what the kind of international audience was for it at the time. Because obviously Tentary Dream came to the attention of Virgin, and that opened the floodgates for a lot of the other bands. Because if you look at it, Schultz signed to Caroline, Virgin, Cannes. Neu were on United Artists, Cannes were on
Speaker 2United Artists, Faust were on Virgin too.
Speaker 3Well, Cannes ended up on Virgin, didn't they, as well, at one point, I think.
Speaker 2They did later on, yeah. Amon Dool II were on United Artists.
Speaker 3So these were incredibly experimental albums that you could compare to contemporary classical music that were getting major label deals, which is unthinkable. But in the UK. But in the UK, yeah. But in the UK, yeah. But in the UK, yeah. But in the UK, yeah. I mean, the Cannes album is very much an album apart. I tell you, the Neu and the Cannes are very much albums apart. Cannes, I think, partly because of Jackie Liebes, his kind of spindly, repetitive, totally distinctive drumming, I think, defines that band as much as anything.
Speaker 2Well, and something that Klaus Dinger and Neu takes even to the next level. Yeah, yeah. Because Neu is a band where it's about the drums. It's about the fact that the drums never change.
Speaker 3It is, although I think there's not. The first album, I mean, Noé I think is so influential many ways massively one of them the cover i mean if you haven't seen it and again they follow this cover concept through the first three albums and it is it's a punk cover five years pre-punk it's very diy very in your face um brutally stark but timeless and in the music here there are two tracks i think is it halagallo and negative land where you've basically got you know the blueprint for post-punk late 70s early 80s experimentalism aspects of joy division for sure but you know certainly that kind of the more experimental end of factories production martin hannett this kind of so yeah stereo lab yeah and there's a relentlessness yeah that is way ahead of its time and completely unlike anything any band in the world is making at that point yeah um but the one thing people get right sorry to interrupt is that with that album there are also a lot of tonal experiments there are a lot of ambient interludes i think that the more relentless rhythmic element of noi is probably more apparent on noi 75 but it begins here you know there are two tracks that
Speaker 2have that might be true i mean noi 75 famously also predates punk it has punk aspects too they're a fascinating band in the space of two or three years they do go through all these different but i think the track that and maybe this is maybe this is slightly unfair to reduce the band to a more laid-back style of music but i think the track that and maybe this is maybe this is maybe the track that and maybe this is slightly more laid-back style of music but i think the track that and maybe this is slightly more laid-back style of music but i think the track that halo gallo that single track which is the track that everyone in track which is the opening track on the opening which is the track everyone thinks of when they think of the noi motor nick sound yeah yeah yeah and the track has been so influential on so many artists and you
Speaker 3can see why and i think because although he's got kind of psychedelic you know rota is a great guitarist and very expressive but they keep things to a minimum like the cover this is spare yes and i think that's kind of and i guess you know that negative land you can hear in so much music after it and um they just don't fuss these are really although there are interesting productions and they're using interesting techniques it's not fussy it's so ahead of
Speaker 2its time it's ridiculous isn't it i mean you hear what bowie and nina were doing four or five years later massively informed by noi and yet probably at the time fell on you know a lot of deaf ears particularly in their own country maybe also in the uk although it did come out on united artists it's the complete antithesis in a way isn't it of british progressive rock you know you yeah yeah you talk about italians sort of taking up on the more kind of you know ornate flowery aspects of progressive rock this is the opposite isn't it this is reducing music to a few elemental
Speaker 3you know the german underground band it's almost like they took the more contemporary classical tonal elements of source for the secrets and white light white heat sister ray as the blueprint that's so philip i mean
Speaker 2a philip glass and steve steve reich are they on the map at this point i don't know if they're on the map i mean terry riley is in c yeah c had come out in 1969 hadn't it or even 68 so i think they've got
Speaker 3these are the reference points and it's almost like yeah and then they take those reference points further further further further yes um but yes it is peculiar they're not you know whereas the italian bands seem blown away by that first wave of british progressive bands that are employing slightly more bombastic classical opera operatic elements i suppose i wonder
Speaker 2if it's somehow a reaction against you know without wishing to go into history and politics is something to do with the fallout from the second world war that germany felt very isolated from the rest of europe at the time again i'm no geopolitician so i'm not going to get involved in that side of things but i think something very punk about bands like faust am on dual to can do you know what i mean by that
Speaker 3totally i mean we've often talked about punk pre-punk this is punk pre-punk something about the attitude isn't there and i and i guess you know one of the only other bands that had it to an extent i suppose mc5 but iggy in the studios had elements of that repetitive but without the musical sophistication so there
Speaker 2is still musical sophistication there is still as she points out the noi album they're still in moments of incredibly pastoral you know lyrical beauty which we'd never hear on a on a stooge's record you know but there's something very punk about the attitude it's like fuck all that you know fuck all those chord changes all those clever time signatures let's just reduce music to its elemental things a drum beat with no fills one note but you know what we can still create something beautiful out of this and they become
Speaker 3you know i think by 75 as you say on one level they're more obviously proto-punk but equally experimental echo side comes out there's a lot of really lovely melodies on these albums you know by the time of noise and and the same with cluster you know cluster two is quite tonal you know it's quite it's based on it's a big cloud of sound it's cloud of sound but by the time of zuckerzeit two years later they're experimenting with synths and really small melodies yeah um i mean that one was called it was called sugar time is the translation and i guess it you know in track time it was called sugar time and i guess it you know in track time it was called sugar time like hollywood and caramel and what have you but it's kind of more beautiful and organic than craftwork in a way another thing
Speaker 2that's very punk the second noi album which was the year after this the second side is just them playing one song at different speeds for the voice or two songs at different speeds the very punk thing to do yeah yeah almost like a fuck you to the audience you know we haven't got enough material to fill up this side of the album so we're just going to play you our single at different speeds we've got a listener review of noi as well let's see what
Speaker 4you've got to say about that one and then we're going to go to the next one and we're going to go to the next one and we're going to go to the next one and we're going to go to the next one i would like to highlight the band noi exclamation mark and rightfully so immediately you are hooked by the metoic beat which made even the imperturbable jack o'libet side look up and it proved to be an exciting inspiring pulse for future generations of musicians a wonderful ambient production by connie plank who deserves a lot of the credits show the band which sound was fully formed right from the start the germans had a wild time with the band and they were able to survive don't get frightened get
Speaker 2excited absolutely i mean i kind of think again kind of echoing a lot of our sentiments there yeah and
Speaker 3mentioning connie plank and mentioning
Speaker 2connie plank which we hadn't mentioned uh connie plank's one of the german producers along with dear to dx i don't know if that's how you say his name that's kind of seemed to be ubiquitous at this time popping up producing a lot of these records so probably also very important anybody's ultra
Speaker 3vox later on connie
Speaker 2plank did yeah he produced um i think he produced rage in eden i want to say yeah yeah anyway i just a few a name check for a few other i mean such a great year for german music we've got great albums also this year from ashra temple schwingungen i don't know what it means in german but somebody out there will know kran's uh first
Speaker 3album because they're in can they're a band apart they've got a sound it's almost like some kind of weird repetitive jazz funk or i was going to say yeah there's a kind of a soul jazz funk but skeletal yeah it's jazz soul funk with the flesh shorn from it yeah it's a skeleton producing funk music embryo father
Speaker 2son and holy ghost their album this year embryo one of the most important german bands of the 70s who were kind of mixing jazz music ethnic music and progressive rock music that they had some american jazz musician charlie mariano was in the band at this time very very probably the most important german jazz rock band of the 70s so a brilliant brilliant year for for german music but of course it's a great year for german music and i think it's a great year for german music preeminent among all of them tangerine dreams night the greatest album ever made in my opinion i don't expect anyone else to agree with me but that's the beauty sometimes isn't it you know when you know that your favorite album is something that no one else on the planet oh yeah
Speaker 3i would agree with you actually then root for it even more yeah although i'm sure there are people out there just disprove that yeah i think it was always seen as a classic i think the problem with tangerine dream is that they so quickly radically changed the sound and that became almost the definitive sound well phagia phagia and rubicon
Speaker 2are definitely the creators of the album of high points and i i can see that and i adore those albums they are masterpieces but i will always have a soft spot for zeit julian cope actually said about zeit he said it's not my favorite tangerine dream album but it's the one i would kiss edgar fro's hardest on the lips for making and i think that sums up my sentiment too let's move on to a category which a bit derogatory but then i'll refer you back to my whitey gets down in the funk soul bucket yeah i don't think it's quite as offensive as that finger in the ear we're talking about the influence of the folkies the musicians that have come from the folk tradition and we have some great entries this year and i want to highlight one straight away we're going to come on to nick drake in a minute but before that let's talk about fairport conventions babbick and lee now i love the fairports this might be the first time that i've ever heard of a fairport convention first ever folk prog rock concept album could be it's the one just
Speaker 3after richard thompson left
Speaker 2isn't it it's two after richard thompson left because they made angel delight the previous year which is another good record but this is the last record i think they made before they kind of all fractalized split up and dave swarbrick put together the the later lineup of the band that made rosie and there's a so this is the last of the classic sort of era of fairport album and it's a concept record pure and simple it has a narrative story about this guy that they they tried to hang him and he survived hanging and and it became this kind of folk story folk tale and this is what the album is about it's a great album and i guess it's part you know part of the zeitgeist isn't it to make a concept album no matter what kind of music you play let's make a concept record and here is what i believe maybe someone out there can disprove this the first ever folk rock concept
Speaker 3album it is possible well i think there was at this time anyway a sort of fusion between as we've seen the fusion between jazz and rock artists but also folk and rock artists so somebody like ian anderson you know almost has a foot in this field i think of the steel ice span and the fairport convention and they also maybe feel apart but of course that whole convention did start off with more west coast pop rock yeah influences covering dylan and
Speaker 2stuff like that
Speaker 3yeah um but this you can get if you like non-more english it's very
Speaker 2in your it is very yeah i think the difference is that you could say well jethro tell we're a folk rock band too yeah ian anderson doesn't sound like he's got his finger in his ear and he's not singing about his girlfriend sailing away from liverpool ever never to return no this sounds exactly like the archetypal the singing approach i'm talking about hanging yeah um but it's it's one of
Speaker 3those things that i think is really wonderful but they're a great band they've got a great organic sound fairport at this point and i think steel ice span i think they're one of the most underrated bands from this period parcel of rogues is that their album this below the salt which has my favorite
Speaker 2steel ice band one of my favorite tracks of all time saucy sailor okay what a track
Speaker 3yes they were a great band they were great folk rock band as adventurous in my view as fairport convention correct me if i'm wrong
Speaker 2ashley hutchings left fairport convention in order to form steel ice burn is that right is that you might be right and then he went and then left them too yeah because i think he was very committed to the idea of the of the english folk song tradition and for him he leaves the bands just as they're
Speaker 3about to go stellar
Speaker 2apparently so well no he's on legion leaf isn't he so he's ever but yes i mean dave swarbrick's fiddle sound is quintessentially you know folky as well isn't it it's a quiet taste i guess that kind of music um but anyway this is one of the most ambitious records ever made in the genre if not the most ambitious album ever made in the genre but without sandy's voice it's always going to be a little bit more of a marmite thing isn't it sandy denny on legion leaf is the difference between it sounding like a niche folk rock album and something that's just transcended and that so many people have well she is she is world-class
Speaker 3whatever she did yeah she would have been an exceptional singer she's
Speaker 2like karen carpet she's up there with karen carpet in terms of her voice so she sings on a record like legion leaf on paper a folk rock album and it makes sense to me that she's going to be a little bit more of a marmite accessible to a very very wide audience you cannot say the same of babbick and lee the voices are very much in that sort of folk no and i think as
Speaker 3well maybe you know they had the kind of high watermark with unhalf bricking legion leaf and i think there's some great stuff on babbick and lee and also full house both of us full house i think there's one is
Speaker 2it sloth sloth is amazing
Speaker 3the coda yeah but i'm just saying there's one particular that coda on sloth is stunning but you know i the voice she was also that kind of star attractor you know she was there's something about her that's quite magnetic visually as well so they lost a lot when she went and i
Speaker 2think when they then lost richard thompson after the next album they kind of lost the only possible person that could have which is the same because you know
Speaker 3as we said it's like beach boys without wilson they carried on making brian wilson yeah they made on they carried on making great records but they didn't quite have the attention yeah and i still think you know in terms of that british folk rock for me it's when you're getting things like sailor's life and early father and gay at their most exploratory that's still my favorite but is
Speaker 2it fair to say because sandy denny released her second solo album this year so yeah she's also missing a little bit on her records i mean i like sandy's records yeah she's got the most extraordinary but like i say i put her on the same part you know the same level as karen carpenter joey mitchell and it shows the quality of her voice her albums are always slightly different from the other albums she's got the most extraordinary but like i say i put she's got the most extraordinary but like i say i put her on the same part you know the same level disappointing to me um i think when she sang with fairports they gave her a grit that she misses a little bit on her solo records i
Speaker 3think north star grassman the raven which in the half
Speaker 2of it and half of it is but
Speaker 3that's got the grit i think that's got the grit it's got the exploratory nature and i agree with you i think 50 of it is exquisite and 50 is a little bit throw away this album same with father and gay as
Speaker 2well this album this year sandy it's a little bit too ignorable it's beautiful her voice has got a few great songs on it uh solo is on this on this album i think the ladies on this album that's a great song and then a lot of a little bit forgettable um i feel like you know that sweet spot was when she was in fairport on legion leaf you have the grit from the band and with her voice it's like a marriage made in heaven yeah and you produce the preeminent folk rock music
Speaker 3masterpiece if i was doing the best of sandy i'd still take tracks from father and gay north star and on this i take the lady music weaver on this album is brilliant as well there are some great one of the stars on this album is and of course he's the star on quite a number of our favorite early 70s album harry robinson his string arrangements are so distinctive and i think what this album likes this to me is her in between i i really do like when north star is special it's special and i actually like like an old-fashioned wolf that comes just after this as well i think there's something very haunting about it her voice is
Speaker 2whatever she can sing the telephone box she's one of the people she can feel she can sing the telephone book and it will it will get you there this
Speaker 3album is a bit like the cover in that it's an airbrush sandy denny yeah it feels to me as if this is an airbrush sandy denny as packaged as she'd ever be maybe rendezvous later for the mainstream and it hasn't got as many quirks because the thing that really draws to me is not only her voice it's like the lady has this she's got a really unusual chord vocabulary at times she makes the unexpected shifts into unexpected territories only a couple of tracks do that and they're enhanced by harry robinson i think it's a lot straighter generally speaking i think than most of her albums i think
Speaker 2you're right i think there's a sense i feel there's a sense that she doesn't quite have the confidence to know what she wants to do what kind of record she wants to make yeah and that's why all four of the solo albums she released during her lifetime are a little bit different from each other which is good but none of them are completely satisfying for me no i mean they've all
Speaker 3got wonderful stuff they've
Speaker 2all got one yeah absolutely two or three abs and next time around from north star oh yeah music weaver from this album um is it late november late november but that's a fathering ghost yeah yeah fantastic i'm saying this is
Speaker 3a pond in the stream she's always doing something exquisite thanks to the night yeah amazing yeah
Speaker 2for me it's the most consistent if you if you think of it as a sound a post fairport sandy album i love that there's just a couple of tracks they're not so good but uh winter winds is it on that record yeah yeah uh bankston nile the sea fantastic fantastic tracks anyway so we love sandy but we don't necessarily think she ever made a great a masterpiece of a solo record unlike nick drake who made three masterpieces and nothing else right yeah every one of them is a masterpiece now i'm one of those people that depending on which day of the week it is and how how i feel when i wake up i could say any one of these three albums is the best nick drake album and there are plenty of days when i'll say pink moon is the best nick drake album and there are plenty of days when i will say the best of nick drake is the best nick drake album five leaves left can be my favorite album some days brighter later my favorite pink moon there's something very special very haunting about it because we know it was the last record he made he did four songs later on but he never finished a record it's the last complete record he made we know he made it essentially in just a couple of sessions he was incredibly depressed apparently recorded the whole album facing the wall couldn't even look at the engineer john wood in the eye recorded his 26 minutes of sublime but simple album with no arrangement ornamentation apart from one piano line on the title track it's just him and an acoustic guitar and there's something very haunting about that in principle but there's something also very haunting about the music
Speaker 3anyway isn't there there is and the interesting thing i suppose the difference between this and the other albums won the absence of arrangements as you said this is really stark it's a so it's
Speaker 2a true so just like your new solo album tim there's no one else
Speaker 3on it thank you it's true
Speaker 2plug for tim's album this
Speaker 3is one of the few albums i've actually covered every single song on it actually yeah really uh with obviously i've covered some with you but i've also done some with peter chilvers as well lord chilvers lord chilvers it's you know it's gorgeous it is quite stark it is quite low the other distinction beyond the absence of elaborate arrangements are that his voice is quite different on this you listen you're saying he was staring at the wall while singing it it's almost like he's murmuring in murmuring to himself now you could argue that could be an influence from one of his friends john martin he's got more of a john martin sounding kind of a murmuring quality because in the previous albums his enunciation is pretty crystal clear he's still got quite a cloudy voice but his pronunciation is clear on this album it's almost words are blurring a little like john martin for
Speaker 2my and i wonder because the first two albums are produced by joe boyd whereas this album and he's
Speaker 3being told to sing or re-sing i'm guessing i
Speaker 2mean reading between lines whereas this album is just simply recorded by john wood i mean there is no production you know
Speaker 3this is the ultimate album well this year along with um i would say mark olman too where it's for no one but themselves it's almost like they're in that studio they're making this for themselves there's an almost a total obliviousness to the fact there's a world outside of this music being made and an expectation
Speaker 2that no one else is going to listen to this record or buy this record yes the way it feels
Speaker 3totally and actually
Speaker 2sadly prophetic in his lifetime no one did buy that record i think something sold like 800 copies at the time or something ridiculous but of course if ever there was a poster child for an album to be reappraised well the whole nick drake career in a way is is the poster child for posthumous reappraisal isn't it i mean it's been his music pops up in adverts in soundtracks it's no musician in their right in their right mind would fail to not would fail to drop nick drake in as an influence these days which is incredible when you think about his his actual experience in life was being ignored completely ignored these albums not selling at all well i was
Speaker 3always interested one description i think a critic gave of him particularly during this period was that he was a very lyrical and articulate guitarist while being a very hesitant vocalist and i thought that was quite interesting you've got two this contrast because what's interesting is the melodies and i guess this is why it sort of appealed to you and i when we're doing things like pink moon and i realized that he always sings in pockets his singing is very sparse but the music is surprisingly rapid the finger picking style and so on yeah um so there's a kind of an interesting thing that you've got almost two tempos going on at once with something like pink moon but yeah it's a glorious album and it's the most consistent like you it depends on how i feel on a given day because you could choose five leaves left you could choose brighter later as the best album any of them could be his definitive best album for different reasons but this is interesting because it's a real contrast with brighter later that i guess is the pure anomaly of his trio of albums in that there's a certain kind of optimism and a certain kind of embracing the world in the album especially with the arrangements and lest we forget john kale does some work on that album as well
Speaker 2it's yeah brighter later the previous album is a very very producer led arranged record with orchestral arrangements and session musicians and it's got the three instrumentals on it as well this album is stark by comparison isn't it what about the lyrics i mean you you know as a songwriter you're sort of lyric writer you're sort of lyric writer yourself there's something about the lyrics on this album for me that haunt me as well lines like um then a movement in your brain sends you out into the rain those kind of lines maybe it's that kind of thing about knowing knowing the history of the artist that makes you read more into it that's actually there but some of it seems almost prophetic as if he knew he was
Speaker 3going to die as did the four songs that he did before he died as well you know again why do you have to be hanging on a star or black eyed dog so high and yeah yeah but there's some there's some
Speaker 2of that on this record too it feels to me you know like he's almost foreseeing his own untimely well
Speaker 3there's something yeah there's something very solitary about it and i think that from a lyrical point of view a little like the music what i like is they've almost got that kind of haiku quality of suggesting more than they say yeah but we've
Speaker 2got a listener review of nick drake's pink moon so obviously feels this is a very important record from this either that or they hate it i doubt it somehow tim now who could hate pink moon
Speaker 5let's hear it rob my favorite album from 1972 is nick drake's pink moon i found it as a teenager and fell in love with drake's original style of making songs the album has unusual chords interesting melodies and intriguing lyrics it's sad the album was to be his last after all he was a singer singer-songwriter like no one else thank you very
Speaker 2much absolutely i mean he's utterly utterly unique isn't he i mean we put him in the finger to the ear but it's very unfair because he kind of transcends really everything doesn't he i mean he's just kind of out on his own and
Speaker 3i mean i get he started in that late 60s folk club environment yeah i mean john martin as you say is
Speaker 2the club his friend john martin would be the closest kind of comparison yeah early john
Speaker 3martin but john martin yeah by this stage had branched out into soul into funk yeah into you know he was they both were influenced by early blues as well i think you can hear that in some of them i think the
Speaker 2one thing the one thing i don't normally associate with with folk rock is that fragility and frailty and vulnerability that nick drake almost uniquely has yeah at least within within that genre which i think has endeared him to so many people he just kind of touches your heart in a way well he
Speaker 3rarely performs or you know what you don't get unlike with tim buckley where every day of him where you know every week there's a new tim buckley live at the lakana or what have you um great recordings of great concerts you don't really get that with drake and i think famously wasn't there one at the south bank royal festival hall where he was booked and he didn't do it and they had you know they always say there was a cardboard cutout and in the very early days and this would have been what an intriguing double bill anthony phillips speaks to the fact and he really wishes he'd listened more closely but nick drake is one of the greatest musicians of all time and i think you know he's one of the greatest musicians of all time and i think he's one of the greatest musicians of all time and i think he's one of the greatest musicians of all time and i think he's one of the greatest musicians of all time and i think he's one of the greatest musicians of all time and i think he's one of the greatest musicians of all time would have probably been pushing brighter later yeah he also
Speaker 2supported incredible string band okay several times apparently as we're including at the royal alba hall but unfortunately no recorded documentation perhaps it's the way it should be that's the way it should be i think it
Speaker 3is i think that the enigma grows i mean they've even got to the stage and they are interesting but they're releasing molly drake's demo she used to record herself yeah the mother of nick and partly they're releasing these because they think they have clues as to where drake got some of his phrasing and influences and yeah i think there is an aspect i mean some of those are really sweet the molly drake demos mr monopoly
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