| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 24/05/2016 : 15:11:22
Jazzy folk/pop...think John Martyn influences ...and Nick Drake. I also can hear Joni Mitchell in a hypnotic way...
Ben Watt and Bernard Butler - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z48vhI9kaOU
Songs:
Hendra
Young Man's Game
Golden Ratio
North Marine Drive
Artist Biography by JT Griffith-allmusic
A Distant ShoreBen Watt is best known as half of the duo Everything But the Girl, which first performed together in 1982. That year, EBTG's Tracey Thorn released her solo debut, A Distant Shore, while Watt released his, North Marine Drive, the following year. Watt's LP went to number one on the U.K. indie charts and included a cover of Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." Everything But the Girl's early material was lite-jazz, but their major international breakthrough came in the dance music genre with Todd Terry's 1995 remix of the song "Missing," which originally appeared on the album Amplified Heart. ("Missing" went to number two on Billboard's Hot 100 in 1996.) Everything But the Girl successfully made the transition to the "new jazz" of techno, house, and trip-hop. That shift can be seen as a rebirth musically and personally.
After the completion of the duo's 1992 album, Acoustic, Watt contracted the rare autoimmune system disease Churg-Strauss syndrome, which nearly killed him. Complaining of chest pains, Watt was hospitalized for eight weeks and in that time lost more than 40 pounds and 85 percent of his small intestine. Recovery took a long time and was never a certainty. Out of his struggle with the deadly disease, Watt wrote a personal memoir, entitled Patient: The History of a Rare Illness, which was published by Grove Press. Able to look back with humor, Watt wrote of Churg-Strauss syndrome: "To paraphrase Joseph Heller," Watt wrote, "You know it's something serious when they name it after two guys." Patient contains his observations about the struggle with the mental as well as physical hurdles of recovery. The book is very much a look at how trauma can force a person to become a new individual.
Walking Wounded One of the new additions to Watt's post-illness life was an engagement with technology. He immersed himself in the World Wide Web and managed the EBTG website. The interest in technology affected the band's music and Watt began to work with sequencers and computers more in his compositions. With the encouragement of friend, producer, and DJ Howie B, Watt began spinning in the world of underground DJs. His boredom with traditional approaches to playing and arranging music, a sense of isolation from an emerging generation of young music fans, and his illness set the stage for the new version of Everything But the Girl.
The band had explored soul and bossa nova in the early '80s and began to experiment with downtempo funk, deep house, and jazzy drum'n'bass. Watt actually remixed a version of "Missing" under the pseudonym Little Joey and fully submerged himself in the U.K. drum'n'bass scene in 1994. The new techno approach was flushed out on Walking Wounded, their Virgin Records debut. The title track and "Wrong" both cracked the U.K. Top Ten. Because of Watt's dedication to the club world, the follow-up, Temperamental, was three years in the making and retained much of the same style. Watt has produced and added vocals, piano, and guitar to releases by Chicane, Deep Dish, Adam F., Beth Orton, Roni Size, and Massive Attack, among others.
Watt attributes his ability to stay energized and young at heart to his remix work and DJ side project, Lazy Dog, an ongoing club event that is hosted regularly in London. Watt and DJ Hannan (who also co-hosts Lazy Dog) released a two-disc set that included the U.K. hit "Tracey in My Room" on Astralwerks in the fall of 2000. The birth of Watt and Thorn's third child kept the duo busy and away from the studio for a time. Watt's remixing eased him back into recording with work for Sade, Sunshine Anderson, and Maxwell. In 2003 he formed the label and club Buzzin' Fly and began to record a series of deep house singles. Released a year later, Buzzin' Fly, Vol. 1 began a series of CDs featuring music from the label mixed together by Watt. Continuing with the label -- and its sister label, Strange Feeling -- and taking on DJ spots on radio, Watt continued to be active within the music scene. In 2013 Watt announced that he would be closing down his two labels, citing the troubles that small, independent labels faced in a market saturated by digital releases. In April 2014 Watt released his second album, Hendra (coming some 30 years after his debut), to much acclaim and saw him working with David Gilmour, Bernard Butler, and Ewan Pearson. The album and subsequent tour were greeted with near unanimous acclaim and the artist won an AIM Independent Music Award for Best Second Album.
Watt entered London's RAK Studio II in 2015 with Butler, drummer Martin Ditchman, bassist Rex Horan, and engineer Bruno Ellingham. He also enlisted guest vocal help from M.C. Taylor of Hiss Golden Messenger and Marissa Nadler. The completed album was entitled Fever Dream on Watt's Unmade Road label. Preceded by video singles for "Gradually" and "Between Two Fires," it was released in April 2016.
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The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK |
| 3 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| lemonade kid |
Posted - 20/06/2016 : 23:23:05
Ben Watt/Hendra
Written by Paul Clarke
©residentadvisor.net 2014
In the '90s Ben Watt took Everything But The Girl from gloomy bedsits to clubland's bright lights off the back of Todd Terry's remix of "Missing," then fully embraced the dance floor with his Lazy Dog night and his label, Buzzin' Fly. This conversion to dance music at the age of 30-something could have been interpreted as a mid-life crisis, the equivalent of trading in the family hatchback for a Ferrari. On his new solo album, we see Watt picking up his acoustic guitar again. But if a mid-life crisis is an attempt to relive one's youth, then it's actually the mature folk of Hendra, rather than the deep house he's released in the last 15 years, that's the textbook example, returning Watt to the same territory of 1983's North Marine Drive, his last solo album.
But while his musical influences (Robert Wyatt, Van Morrison and Neil Young) remain the same, the distance between Watt and his 21-year-old self is clear in his words, which focus on memories, regret and the passing of time. You could say that lines like "The estate agent's been over / I've resurfaced the driveway" (on "The Levels") reveal just how middle-aged Watt is, but here selling a house represents the struggle to relinquish the past. Dave Gilmour's guest appearance offers more than just star power, too, given that he once sang "Hanging on in quiet desperation / Is the English way" on Pink Floyd's "Time"Ñthe very state in which Hendra exists. The title trackÑa tribute to Watt's late sisterÑas well as "Forget" and "Matthew Arnold's Field" all spin stories of lives stained with sorrow. The guitars and analogue synths of collaborators Bernard Butler and Ewan Pearson have the same understated beauty as the images of the English countryside that crop up throughout.
Hendra is an always beautiful, sometimes stunning album, if one that bears no trace of its creator's knack for house music. If the album has any relationship to club culture at all, it's that it could be a great a comedown staple, like Beth Orton's Central Reservation, which Watt also produced. But Hendra is more than just a soundtrack to the morning after. "Spring," the album's one unabashedly optimistic track, invites us to "sweep the curtain open / push the window wide." It's one of many moments that makes this seem like a bright new dawn for Ben Watt.
If you don't have Hendra on...here it is once more...beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9vBvIxPUXA&list=PLSuCkR33XCtpYi-_V-SAK-g4UrGeFzZqj
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The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK
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| lemonade kid |
Posted - 24/05/2016 : 15:24:55
Ben Watt, Bernard Butler & David Gilmour
Spring & Old Flame - Islington Assembly Hall 19/05/2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lmF_lvhNgU
Ben Watt with David Gilmour / 'The Levels' (Live)
A special live stripped-back version of 'The Levels' featuring Ben on vocals and acoustic guitar, and Pink Floyd's David Gilmour on slide guitar, recorded at David's Medina studio in Hove last month. The original electrified album version featuring the two appears on Ben's new solo album, 'Hendra':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG2Xh523Dt0
David's studio...talk about guitar-envy!
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The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK
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| lemonade kid |
Posted - 24/05/2016 : 15:15:02
Hendra 2014
Benjamin Brian Thomas Watt (born 6 December 1962) is a British musician, singer, songwriter, author, DJ and radio presenter, best known as one half of the duo Everything but the Girl.
Full album play
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrwgSSgqmr8&list=PLSuCkR33XCtpYi-_V-SAK-g4UrGeFzZqj&index=2
Hendra is the second studio album released by the English singer, author and multi-instrumentalist Ben Watt on April 15, 2014 through Unmade Road, under exclusive license to Caroline International. The record is a collaboration with Bernard Butler and features a guest-appearance by David Gilmour on slide guitar and backing vocals on 'The Levels'.
AllMusic Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
Calling Hendra Ben Watt's first solo album in 31 years is true but it's also misleading. Watt was always active during those three decades, devoting himself first to Everything But the Girl -- the duo he had with his wife Tracey Thorn -- and once that group came to a creative end around the turn of the millennium (the pair remained married), he steadily worked as a DJ, sometimes releasing dance compilation albums, while also authoring the acclaimed 1996 book Patient.
Of these two endeavors, Patient may be the closest touchstone to Hendra, Watt's 2014 album, as the record is hushed and intimate, often suggesting not so much a confessional as a quiet, impassioned conversation with an old friend. There's no hint of dance music, which isn't to say Hendra is devoid of rhythm. Watt dabbles with bossa nova and often follows a pleasingly relaxed pop shuffle, the kind of pattern that enlivens a sweet melody without distracting from it.
Throughout Hendra, Watt achieves this delicate balance, preserving a sense of tranquility that's never monotonous. Often, it feels as if there are no more than two musicians on a given track, a claim that is occasionally true but this speaks more to the intimacy of Watt and his handful of collaborators, usually producer Ewan Pearson and guitarist Bernard Butler, than it does to the actual arrangements. David Gilmour comes in to color "The Levels" and he manages not to overwhelm and even surprises, avoiding textures and phrases that have become signatures, functioning as a painter, not a featured artist.
This speaks to the careful craft of Hendra: every element is in the right place but Watt is smart enough to leave some elements undone, giving the album a human heart that's evident no matter how deliberate the entire affair may be.
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The actual writing of a song usually comes in the form of a realisation.
I can't contrive a song. Ð GENE CLARK
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