Eyebrow - Strata (Album art)

Album art inspiration

Eyebrow - Strata (2017)

Paul Wigens - drums, percussion, violin, bowed guitar

Pete Judge - trumpet, electronics

Images by Paul Wigens

Design by Jake McMurchie

Eyebrow are a trumpet and drums duo based in Bristol, UK. Formed in 2009, their music evolves out of improvisations which are reassembled into structured pieces with unexpectedly cinematic sweeps, like a journey through a slowly-changing landscape. The band’s 5th album, Strata, was released last month (October 2017).

The new album from the Bristolian duo Eyebrow was destined to be called Deep Time, a concept that is rooted in the work of  Scottish geologist, physician, naturalist and experimental agriculturalist James Hutton (1726-1797). It was his belief that the Earth was perpetually being formed, through a process of rock erosion, sedimentation and formation. The idea that the Earth is alive was first scientifically discussed by Hutton, he anticipated the Gaia hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock in the 1960s. This theory proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a synergistic self-regulating, complex system that helps to maintain and perpetuate the conditions for life on our planet.

Paul Wigens

Unfortunately Eyebrow had to find a new title for their imminent CD release when Harrison Birtwistle premiered a new orchestral work titled Deep Time in June 2017. Yet the themes and metaphors of Deep Time (Erosion, Formation, Synergy and Gaia) still embed themselves in Eyebrow's 5th album Strata. 

Paul Wigens created the album cover artwork, he explains more about its creation,
"The original images were of sunlight through curtains and slatted blinds which created the abstract wavy lines. The images were created in the Brushes app on my phone and enlarged and enhanced in Photoshop. I used my finger to 'paint' over the pictures. Great fun!"

Pete Judge

To the viewer the album cover contains many stories, flowing far away from its sunshine origins. The purists see an anticline, a geological formation of folded rock strata. The more simple interpretation is as plain as black and white, two distinct personalities, Judge and Wigens. The lines don't sit beside each other in perfect definition though, they ebb and blur, moving as the eye scans over them. Symbolic perhaps of Eyebrow, whose music seeps and bleeds between genres, travelling towards new music landscapes that have yet to be defined.

Read an excellent review of Strata at The Jazzmann.

All Eyebrow’s albums are available to download at: https://eyebrow.bandcamp.com/

See Eyebrow Live
1st February 2018 - St James Wine Vaults, 10 St James's Street, BA1 2TW Bath, Somerset

Get The Blessing - Astronautilus album launch

Pete Judge

Get The Blessing
Jake McMurchie - Saxophone
Pete Judge - Trumpet
Jim Barr - Bass
Clive Deamer - Drums

Venue - Match&Fuse Festival, Rich Mix, London
Date - 16th October 2015
Current Album - Astronautilus (Naim Jazz Records naimcd221) 

Jake McMurchie

See them -

27.11.2015 La Source, Fontaine, FR

05.12.2015 The Goods Shed, Stroud, UK
08.12.2015 Duc Des Lombards, Paris, FR
10.12.2015 Jamboree, Barcelona, ES
11.12.2015 Sala Clamores, Madrid, ES
12.12.2015 Sala Clamores, Madrid, ES
13.12.2015 El Almacén de Little Bobby, Santander, ES
14.12.2015 Las Armas, Zaragoza, ES

Bristolian 4 piece launch new album Astronautilus at the Match&Fuse festival.

Jim Barr

Funeral fires, burning slowly, Get The Blessing burn with more purpose, a slow violence with a latent or undiscovered promise.

Imposing, yes, but always as though they are a step further back from the edge of the stage, an invitation to bring the audience forward, waiting for the people to commit.

Hip Judge and McMurchie twitch their anthemic muscles, flexing like two body builders at a meet, glistening with a ping. Judge forever opens the door for us, leaving the windows wide, he is the accomplice to our raid. The wind rushes through, maybe (again) think of slow movements, not as soft as 'Un homme et une femme' but more the darker passages of 'In the mood for love'.

Clive Deamer

Rib cage and elbows, Deamer is a walking Vanitas tableau, the momento mori of the band, he has the look of an undead king, both regal and macabre. Barr is always the presence in the background, the unexplained, the watcher in the forest. It is because of the bowed head, and the eyes that watch out through the lowered brow.

My quick drawings are never heavy enough to convey the presence of Get The Blessing. Film does it best, and the live visuals from John Minton did it even better.

The girls screamed for McMurchie, adoration from the JM fan club being the strangest of juxtapositions.

AL.

EYOT & Marko Miladinović - Similarity album inspiration




Similarity, EYOT (album cover) - Marko Miladinović

 We continue our album inspiration posts with a visit to Nis, Serbia and the latest offering from EYOT. 'Similarity' is the 3rd opus from the Balkan foursome, Dejan Ilijic (Piano), Milos Vojvodic (Drums), Sladjan Milenovic (Guitar) and Marko Stojiljkovic (Bass) but this album has a distinct Bristolian weight to it. Recorded, mixed and mastered by Jim Barr at J&J Studios, Bristol, UK in November 2013. It also features two more Get The Blessing personnel in the form of Jake McMurchie (saxophone) and Pete Judge (trumpet).

Marko Miladinović

The artist who created the cover artwork for 'Similarity' is Marko Miladinović, whose broad portfolio includes forays into photography, art and design. He currently works at the Centre for Culture and Arts in his hometown of Aleksinac, Serbia where he was born in 1981. He has won several awards for his painting and photography, with over 20 international exhibitions under his belt.



Marko Miladinović - sculpture

The 'Similarity' artwork is inspired by an album of delicacy, the music talks of airiness and gentle persuasion. It straddles the genres of Jazz, traditional Balkan musical and electronic earthiness that gives the listener the space to breathe and dream. There are paths and walkways to explore within each track like second tune 'Druids'. While the evocative imagery in opener 'How shall the dust storm start' is a fertile ground for an artist like Miladinović. It epitomises many of the tunes, which are a blank canvas of possibilities for the listener to explore. 'How shall the dust storm start' for me talks of a hot European town in mid siesta, crackling with energy despite not having a denizen in sight.

Marko Miladinović

The title track 'Similarity' has a delicious complexity which works against the rest of the album, its tread is urban, where the remaining album stretches into landscape dimensions. X-rays and microwaves fizzle as creeping night-crawlers wander the streets. If it was a figurative vision then Edward Hopper would have painted it, combining the alien and the familiar in that unnerving style of his.



EYOT - Horizon

Dejan Ilijic explains why he chose Marko Miladinović's artwork to represent EYOT's latest offering, "I like the colours, they "sound" like our music and there is a small similarity with first album cover, Horizon, you can see some kind of the Horizon on it, that means we are still sailing full steam ahead"




Marko Miladinović - Landscape

Miladinović's artwork compliments the album and it creates the spaces for which the mind can dwell. Like the music there is still work for us to do, what we bring to the picture is what we get out of it.

The biggest clue to understanding how Marko Miladinović's  brain works is in his photography of the landscape. He cuts and trims what could be bland views into compositional gems, and the textures he conjures from both the small and large scale are what makes both his work and the music of EYOT worth devoting time to.

The album will be released on 1st August 2014 by Ninety and Nine Records NY
 www.ninetyandninerecords.com and you can get your hands on a copy here - BUY Similarity   
 
Keep up to date with the latest EYOT gigs and news at www.eyotmusic.net

AL.

Get The Blessing - Antimatters

Jim Barr - Bass

Black suited, white shirts, focussed demeanours, they meant business in their own oblique kind of way. Get The Blessing launched their fourth album 'Lope and Antilope' at the Jazz Café earlier this month (05/03/2014). The healthy throb of the audience was as black (attired) and thick (in numbers) as Jim Barr's lush beard. Darkened even further by the gothic wonder of EYOT who had played moments before in support.

Clive Deamer
Drums

It was a long list of 14 tunes that ebbed and flowed throughout the night, the fluidity of the performance being it's strongest theme. Amongst me there were a few who were disappointed that they entered without flame coloured cellophane masks. This malaise was quickly dispelled by a disorientating journey through unpredictable compositions and pulsing beats.



Jake McMurchie -
Saxophones

The Bass spoke loudest on the opening exchanges, the second 'Antilope' let us descend into the depths and Jim Barr was a dominant figure despite alternating in and out of the shadows. He is every inch a villainous looking figure, the most gangsterish of the quartet, if he was to add a few inches to the waistband and wear a scarlet cummerbund he would be legendary Albert Spica of Thief, Cook, Wife, Lover fame. Although I imagine he does not thrust forks into women's faces or his enemies into dog faeces.

Pete Judge - Trumpet

The third tune heralded a theme like a Spy Thriller and the saxophone of Jake McMurchie caught the imagination as though he had pushed Lalo Shifrin down a set of steep stairs. Whodunnit? It was McMurchie, and again on 'Quiet' and impressively during a buzzing 'Low Earth Orbit' with it's pulsating roll against an exotic landscape.


Clive Deamer was straight and powerful throughout and was hard to capture on paper despite being the fulcrum, rhythmically and physically (on stage) for the music to rise.

Adrian Utley - Guitar

Adrian Utley immediately made an impression when he was introduced for the fourth tune but it was the subsequent 'Luposcope' where he bowed his way into the audiences psyche. The result was a hollowness that was as attractive and compelling as a seaside town out of season. Secrets discovered when alone can sometimes be the most deeply felt. Even though I stood next to jazz-man Steve Marchant and introduced myself to three McMurchie groupies Rachel, Julia and Jacqui it was very much a voyage of introspection and for losing oneself in the folds of Get The Blessing's warping melodies.

John Hegley - Poet/Narration

Before I disappear up my own arse let me cling onto something much more tangible. Past the night's halfway point Get The blessing were joined onstage by poet John Hegley who musically narrated 'Alphabetically Disorder', complete with dance moves that Basil Fawlty must have practiced before the mirror in his youth. The incongruity of Hegley's witty words and the aforementioned choreography against GTB's moody loops was delicious.

Going by Get The Blessing's performance, 'Lope and Antilope' will provide us simply with the space and the process that catches the mind. Not easily digestible in one night and worth more than one sitting, it needs to be heard and to be given the chance to fire the imagination.

AL.