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| Rory Simmons |
Monocled Man
Rory Simmons - trumpet, flugelhorn, keyboards, guitar, electronics
Chris Montague - guitar
Jon Scott - drums, electronics
Emilia Mårtensson - vocals
Ed Begley - vocals
Date - 27th October 2016
Venue -
Jazz Nursery, Waterloo, London, UKCurrent Album - We Drift Meridian (Whirlwind Recordings, 2016)
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| Jon Scott |
The minute islands and atolls amidst the vastness of our world’s oceans provide intriguing inspiration for
Monocled Man’s second album,
We Drift Meridian – a concept devised by trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist and composer
Rory Simmons. With established colleagues
Chris Montague (electric guitar) and
Jon Scott (drums/electronics), plus vocal contributions from
Emilia Mårtensson and
Ed Begley, Simmons layers-up haunting electronic and acoustic soundscapes which reflect the remoteness and sometimes curious histories and characters associated with these far-flung, isolated spaces.
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| Chris Montague |
Monocled Man’s cinematic beds of sound, carefully crafted with modular synths, sequencers and chopped audio, are all fashioned into an expansive framework which provides a springboard for individual artistry. Chris Montague’s characteristically oblique guitar style and Jon Scott’s hard-hitting, sparky drumming – both of which are unwaveringly inventive – join with Simmons’ plaintive trumpet in generating these appropriately drifting, searching panoramas.
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| Ed Begley |
'Tromelin' (a small, uninhabited sandbank island in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, with a history of shipwrecks and abandoned slaves) is depicted by electronic call signs, dramatic percussion and forlorn trumpet riffs, whilst 'Deception Island' bubbles with electronic vigor and Ed Begley’s punky vocals.
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| Emilia Mårtensson |
One of the most eery island tales – interpreted in both Scott Moorman Adrift and Fiction Afloat – recalls when a 17ft whaler, with a crew of five, went missing off Hawaii. Several years later, a small, Hawaii-registered boat was discovered on atoll Taongi, 2,000 miles away… and a shallow grave alongide revealed a human jawbone which was matched to crew member Scott Moorman’s dental records. Such bizarre, aching hopelessness is represented by chiming repetition, seabird-calling trumpet and, later, Mårtensson’s and Begley’s intertwined vocals which speak of history becoming immortalised in stories.
AL.
