The Canterbury Scene ☕

[ribbons]

@ribbons , I'm astonished you know this! How? But then you do have impeccable taste. But I consider these albums by Dirk to be relatively obscure. In fact, I don't think I've ever listened to Music From a Round Tower myself, though I might see if I can buy it digitally from someplace tomorrow.

I know he also has played in the Safar wind band and checking YouTube Music, he's actually up now with two other albums I've never heard, Middle Eastern Journeys and Meditation. Checking his Wikipedia page, it seems these are both from a multitude of library music albums (?) he's done, so maybe they've not had a regular release before.

An exciting discovery 🙂 tomorrow will be world music day.

Another obscure track, a very good friend of mine plays bass in Panzerpappa and they got a hold of Richard Sinclair for a collab for their 2006 album Koralrevens Klagesang (lament of the coral fox). It's not the best song from that album, but a pleasant tune still:

@Guybrush, first of all, "Koralrevens Klagesang" is delightful and I really like Panzerpappa's light, playful sound. I have never heard them before.  How were they able to recruit Sinclair!?  Very cool that your friend plays bass with them.   

OK - Where did I begin with my Dirk Campbell journey?  What first caught my attention was via reading an article in the early '90s which mentioned that Mont/Dirk had been influenced by Keith Emerson in his days with The Nice (and I've always been a huge admirer of Emerson).  So then I gravitated to Egg's albums, which I loved; and read further that Mont/Dirk had very briefly been in National Health and Gilgamesh.  Then in the late '90s I frequented a record store in Greenwich Village whose owner was a prog nut and had an extensive prog/Canterbury section in the shop.  He turned my attention to the NH Missing Pieces compilation, Dirk's Music From a Round Tower and also the India album Dirk recorded with the Indian percussionist Dinesh Pandit.  Later on, I also purchased Dirk's Eastern European Journeys and Middle Eastern Journeys – then listened to his library and film pieces as well as World Wind Band's Safar online.

I would highly recommend Music From a Round Tower to you, Tore – it's a beautifully atmospheric world music album with a variety of non-Western instruments, vocalese and light synths, but still retaining a somewhat pastoral English ambience.   If you do manage to get it, I hope you'll like it and maybe even add it to your daughter's playlist.   

[Guybrush]

@Guybrush, first of all, "Koralrevens Klagesang" is delightful and I really like Panzerpappa's light, playful sound. I have never heard them before.  How were they able to recruit Sinclair!?  Very cool that your friend plays bass with them. 

OK - Where did I begin with my Dirk Campbell journey?  What first caught my attention was via reading an article in the early '90s which mentioned that Mont/Dirk had been influenced by Keith Emerson in his days with The Nice (and I've always been a huge admirer of Emerson).  So then I gravitated to Egg's albums, which I loved; and read further that Mont/Dirk had very briefly been in National Health and Gilgamesh.  Then in the late '90s I frequented a record store in Greenwich Village whose owner was a prog nut and had an extensive prog/Canterbury section in the shop.  He turned my attention to the NH Missing Pieces compilation, Dirk's Music From a Round Tower and also the India album Dirk recorded with the Indian percussionist Dinesh Pandit.  Later on, I also purchased Dirk's Eastern European Journeys and Middle Eastern Journeys – then listened to his library and film pieces as well as World Wind Band's Safar online.

I would highly recommend Music From a Round Tower to you, Tore – it's a beautifully atmospheric world music album with a variety of non-Western instruments, vocalese and light synths, but still retaining a somewhat pastoral English ambience.  If you do manage to get it, I hope you'll like it and maybe even add it to your daughter's playlist. 

Wow, @ribbons I'm impressed! You're definitely the site's Dirk Campbell scholar 🙂 I only hope to follow in some of these footsteps.

I was quite sad to get the news some years back that Dirk lost his own daughter, Anna (who was a soldier), when she was killed by Turkish bombs when fighting ISIS.

About Panzerpappa, I can't quite remember how they got a hold of Richard, but I am technically able to reach him myself as I've corresponded a bit with his wife Heather some years ago (she handles his email). I was trying to run a site/forum dedicated to all things Canterbury called The Polite Force (after one of the more obscure groups) and got in contact, possibly through guitarist Mark Hewins. Mark also shared with me and my site some lovely stories from going on tours with Pip Pyle and others.

I don't want to share personal correspondence in public, but anyone curious can ask me on DMs. I might publish Hewins' stories here if I can find them 🙂 I'm sure he wouldn't mind, having also shared them with the Facelift Canterbury fanzine back in the 90s (still available from Phil Howitt, I believe - I got them all ❤️).

About Koralrevens Klagesang, our bedtime playlist and my bass playing friend, one of our favorite songs from that album is his composition Apraxia. Since you also like slow and meandering, maybe you will like it too 🙂 it is vaguely Canterbury related and so on topic after all.

I've used this song to try and teach my daughter how to count beats.

It goes three bars of 7/8 and one bar of 6/8 first. Then, it changes to three bars of 6/8 and one bar of 5/8 for a middle section, then a return to 7 and 6  for the ending. While being unusual time, it's very easy to count.

Also the first part is 31 bars while the second is 20 and the last is 13.. which is nearly Fibonacci's sequence, although it's missing a bar in the second part. And the last note ends on pi (3:14) 😄 so that's some insight into my friend's composer brain, at least back then.

[ribbons]

@Guybrush, yes, I was also very sad to read the news of the tragedy befalling Dirk's daughter Anna/Şehîd Hêlîn Qereçox.  She was so brave, and so young.  What a hero she was. 

Very interesting that you ran a Canterbury site! – on first glance at the title, I thought you had named it after the Egg album.  If you are able to find any of Mark Hewins's reminiscences I would like to read them some time.

I am REALLY liking Panzerpappa's music so far, and "Apraxia" is especially lovely – the Scandinavians do have their ways with the poignant melodies. 

Your daughter must a be a very smart girl learning sophisticated concepts about meter and tempo at this young age, courtesy of dad.   

[Nimbly9]

As far as Canterbury goes, the ones I've been going back to a lot recently are Camel's Rain Dances and Breathless albums.  Those two albums showcase the genre spreading its wings a bit into other kinds of commercial but still proggy waters, and I think they work really well.

[Guybrush]

@Guybrush, yes, I was also very sad to read the news of the tragedy befalling Dirk's daughter Anna/Şehîd Hêlîn Qereçox.  She was so brave, and so young.  What a hero she was. 

Very interesting that you ran a Canterbury site! – on first glance at the title, I thought you had named it after the Egg album.  If you are able to find any of Mark Hewins's reminiscences I would like to read them some time.

I am REALLY liking Panzerpappa's music so far, and "Apraxia" is especially lovely – the Scandinavians do have their ways with the poignant melodies. 

Your daughter must a be a very smart girl learning sophisticated concepts about meter and tempo at this young age, courtesy of dad. 

Thank you for your kind words 🥰

Being inspired by Egg might seem the more obvious route (and maybe The Civil Surface also could have worked), but it was the discovery of the band and trying to find recordings of them that made me think of using it as a name for the site 🙂 Either way, the site thoroughly failed.. but at least it put me in contact with some interesting people, including Mark Hewins who played guitar in that old band.

I'll see if I can't dig up those stories and dole them out here in this thread 🙂

About Panzerpappa, they are great! And play at RIO and Zappa festivals, etc. Some of my other favorites by them are Kantonesisk Kanotur (fan favorite from Koralrevens Klagesang) which has some lovely percussion and Ugler I Moseboka and Bati La Takton (from Astromalist). Ugler i Moseboka is the song I generally recommend to new listeners 🙂

[Guybrush]

I think I managed to omit Camel in my original post (!!) but of course they deserve mention. I actually listened to Breathless not too long ago for the first time in many years. My favorite is still Down on the Farm. It's also very obviously a Richard Sinclair song having wormed its way onto a Camel album 😄

But hey, I love Richard.

Also, my daughter loves Rhayader's theme from The Snowgoose and we had to play it over and over again in the car while driving around Denmark this summer.

[Guybrush]

Here's one of Mark Hewins stories which I believe may have been published in the Facelift Fanzine in 1994:

Edit:

Actually found all of them on Mark Hewins very old website available through the Wayback Machine, so I'll just provide a link instead 🙂

https://web.archive.org/web/20030822115145/http://www.musart.co.uk/stories.htm

In the words of Mark: "This page contains stories about the band 'Soft Heap' (a living-branch of Soft Machine), featuring: Elton Dean, Pip Pyle, John Greaves, and Mark Hewins. Also you'll find anecdotes about odd Canterbury bands in the 70's and 80's."

The stories are actually quite fun to read!

[Guybrush]

Lars recently mentioned Elvis Costello who, of course, also has a very slight Canterbury connection. But it's enough for this thread.

Record producer and songwriter Clive Langer had composed music for a song for Robert Wyatt, but wasn't happy with the lyrics and so brought Elvis Costello on board the project to come up with something. The result you may be familiar with, the song Shipbuilding.

About it, Wyatt said: "Geoff (Travis, head of Rough Trade Records) sent me a cassette saying this is a pretty good song, you ought to sing it. So I tried it out and it sounded good. The musical setting was nothing to do with me. Elvis had already recorded a vocal for it – very good vocal – and it was going to come out in the same form with him singing on it. I went in and did a vocal in a couple of hours with Mr. Costello producing, and that was it ... I had no expectations of it at all. All I thought about was singing it in tune!" (Source: Wikipedia)

So it must have been a surprise when it later on charted 🙂

Robert's version can be heard above and Elvis Costello also made a version:

I do prefer the version with Wyatt, but something I find interesting about Costello's version is it features Chet Baker on trumpet.

I like Chet.

[Guybrush]

I'll just gush a little bit about Of Queues and Cures, National Health's second album.

It is mostly instrumental music, somewhat rigidly composed but just fun and amazingly catchy while still challenging for first time listeners.

The album starts and closes with two versions of The Bryden 2-Step for Amphibians which may be the band at their most catchy.

The highlight of the song, in both versions, is the ascending riff that starts just after 3 minutes in this version.

The next song you probably learn to love, though it might take a few tries, is The Collapso.

And I won't go on too much longer, but the track Binoculars is quite wonderful once you get used to John Greaves singing.

The best part of it is Jimmy Hastings' best recorded flute solo starting at about 3:10 and followed by that brilliant organ riff by Stewart that goes duuh duduh duduh duh duh!!

I feel like I should also mention Pip Pyle's drumming which is loose and fun and great to my ears and Phil Miller's guitar tone that always cuts straight through the mix. I think some probably find it jarring, but then you kinda learn to love it ❤️

[Guybrush]

Pip Pyle died in 2006 on August 28 in a Paris hotel. I strongly suspect it was suicide although I've seen no source confirming this.

I remember there was some clip online, maybe on YouTube, of Richard Sinclair singing God Song at his funeral, backed by a band that I believe included Phil Miller and other mourners who happened to join in briefly.

The song is one of my favourites from Matching Mole, Wyatt's band after leaving Soft Machine (and Matching Mole is kinda what Soft Machine sounds like translated to French).

[grindy]

I'll just gush a little bit about Of Queues and Cures, National Health's second album.

It is mostly instrumental music, somewhat rigidly composed but just fun and amazingly catchy while still challenging for first time listeners.

The album starts and closes with two versions of The Bryden 2-Step for Amphibians which may be the band at their most catchy.

The highlight of the song, in both versions, is the ascending riff that starts just after 3 minutes in this version.

The next song you probably learn to love, though it might take a few tries, is The Collapso.

And I won't go on too much longer, but the track Binoculars is quite wonderful once you get used to John Greaves singing.

The best part of it is Jimmy Hastings' best recorded flute solo starting at about 3:10 and followed by that brilliant organ riff by Stewart that goes duuh duduh duduh duh duh!!

I feel like I should also mention Pip Pyle's drumming which is loose and fun and great to my ears and Phil Miller's guitar tone that always cuts straight through the mix. I think some probably find it jarring, but then you kinda learn to love it ❤️

I love that album so much. Recently listened to it while driving through the snowy woods on a sunny morning and it was such an amazing atmosphere.

[Guybrush]

I love that album so much. Recently listened to it while driving through the snowy woods on a sunny morning and it was such an amazing atmosphere.

Yes! I recently listened to Bryden while driving home from our Christmas party at night. I'm always playing drums as I'm driving 😄 and I love Pip's drumming on that track so much - as well as everything else.

Such a fun, lively album.

[Guybrush]

Here's Robert Wyatt and Monica Vasconcelos singing a duet from the 2007 album Comicopera.

[grindy]

Never heard about this band until today, but looks like Rubber Tea might be a cool newcoming addition to the Prog/Canterbury scene.
Just browsed through their newest album so far but it sounds really promising.

[Guybrush]

Was at a bus stop when I last read your post, so didn't get to actually listen, but yeah.. these guys have a good sound.

Also there's not enough female singers in prog 🙂