Second Language
Following on from the Second Language’s label recent re-emergence out of semi-hibernation, with The Declining Winter’s still-sublime Last April, comes a return-within-a-return from visual artist and onetime pastoral-psych legend Mark Fry. Having previously brought 2011’s baroque-tinged I Lived In The Trees (with backing assistance from The A. Lords) and 2014’s soothingly lush South Wind, Clear Sky to the 2L catalogue, after a decade or so’s gap arrives the meta-anointed Not On The Radar.
finest songwriting
Although a long-time coming, this is far from being a laboured long-player. Recorded in loose yet finessed fashion in his Normandy painting studio, with integral multi-instrumentalist input from returning accomplices
Angèle David-Guillou (
Piano Magic,
Klima),
John Parker (
Nizlopi) and
Iain Ross (
Laika), as well as the newly-augmenting
Ian Button (
Papernut Cambridge,
Swansea Sound,
ad infinitum) and producer
David Sheppard (
Snow Palms,
Ellis Island Sound et al), this is an elevating and entrancing ensemble suite, built around some of Fry’s
finest songwriting to date.
With some therapeutic wisdom-rich late-life reflections on a world going too fast (“Who can stop the world / From all its spinning”) and the related passage of time (“I used to have all the time in the world / I gave it away for free / Now I keep an eye on it / I keep it under lock and key”), unfurled through Fry’s warm half-spoken vocals, giving the collection a strong core thread, proceedings musically weave between various gradations of tender intimacy and – somewhat unexpectedly — lateral grooves.
hushed bucolic plaintiveness
Therefore, in the former larger camp the compositions emerge through electro-acoustic balminess (“Only Love”), languid airiness (“Big Red Sun”), evocative ethereality (“Where The Water Meets The Land”), twinkling slow jazz (“Daybreak”) and
hushed bucolic plaintiveness (“If I Could”), to gently expand upon the commanding heights of the aforementioned
South Wind, Clear Sky.
spacious and spacey
Contrastingly, out of the latter camp arrives the stirring “Stormy Sunday” and the low-slung title-track, which both stretch out as gorgeously radiant and rubbery polyrhythmic workouts that particularly appear to bear the percussive-minded imprint of Sheppard’s own work elsewhere. The eponymous cut’s marvellous malleability also lends itself brilliantly to a
spacious and spacey six-minute remix treatment from
Richard Norris as a digital-only bonus track.
Both reassuringly familiar and unpredictably inventive, Not On The Radar delightfully encapsulates the benevolent organic power that can be drawn from a combination of reclusion-borne songcraft and open-minded collaboration. Hopefully, though, we won’t have to wait quite so long for a sequel.
-Adrian-
Following on from the Second Language’s label recent re-emergence out of semi-hibernation, with The Declining Winter’s still-sublime Last April, comes a return-within-a-return from visual artist and onetime pastoral-psych legend Mark Fry. Having previously brought 2011’s baroque-tinged I Lived In The Trees (with backing assistance from The A. Lords) and 2014’s soothingly lush South Wind, Clear Sky to the 2L catalogue, after a decade or so’s gap arrives the meta-anointed Not On The Radar.
