NICK PYNN: AFTERPLANESMAN
Roundhill Music Round004
https://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=626051768
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/afterplanesman/id294063118
I’ve written reviews of albums and gigs by or involving Nick Pynn a number of times before, and although this is quite an old record, I’ve just recently acquired it – I won it in a Raffle at a Real Music Club event – I think it’s so good it deserves a review if only to encourage you, Dear Reader, to check it out.
Nick is one of those guys whom you envy because of his seemingly limitless energy and ability to adapt every new thing he discovers into his way of living with consummate ease and make it appear that it’s always been there. In this way we find that his thoughts and feelings while spending time on a WW1 submarine restoration project are translated into the album’s title track ‘Afterplanesman’ and almost unintentionally a number of very diverse tunes manage to contrive to form a concept album.
Not only does Nick manage to play every one of his vast collection of historic instruments and self-built musical imaginings as if they were incorporated into his body at birth but the diversity of styles he applies to them is mind-blowing. Thus we have tracks which sound that they belong in the age of Baroque, or maybe a flamenco club, are sound tracks for the 1960s TV series ‘Tales from the Riverbank,’ or that wouldn’t be out of place on early Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd albums.
Maybe the strangest track on this album is ‘Joker Jack’ which takes a field recording of a poker game where comedian Rich Hall [whose band Otis Lee Crenshaw and the Black Liars, Nick was once part of] is the dealer and overlays a gentle but appropriate string soundtrack – it’s a complete one-off but works so well that it’s not way out of place here.
Nick is a polymath of music, if I may be allowed that phrase, and deserves to be more widely known outside the circles in which he moves [where he is rightly acclaimed] so if you haven’t yet sampled his wares, I suggest that next time you want to explore musical pastures new you Google Nick or rifle through the racks at your nearest PROPER record shop and pick out one of his cds to listen to – this one would be an excellent choice for starters!
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