Wheeldon, Nick -& Friends-
Make Art (2lp)
'Make Art' is Nick Wheeldon's 4th solo album. A masterful, imposing work. The project began with Julien Ledru, first heard by Nick at a concert he was organising at La Pointe Lafayette, Paris. A few demos were recorded on cassette, with Julien's guitar and Nick, who, as usual, already had several songs up his sleeve, singing. The whole thing started out in a more radical folk style, strongly guided by Julien's classy fingerpicking. The collaboration began with a track as beautiful as it is leaden, entitled 'No God No Master,' recorded on an 8-track tape recorder in a bedroom in Montreuil. As the demos piled up, they decided that maybe they could be more ambitious than originally thought with this album. Recorded, at first live, onto a Tascam MS-16 track, conditions were drastic and fast with Paul Trigoulet at the helm at Fausse Boutique Studios, Lille. The recording took less than a week with musiciens flying in from as far as Boston, USA, to sing on the record. The emotion was at full gallop as always. The violent free sax of Laurent Riguat and the abstract yet melodic violin of Thomas Carpentier began to distort and transform these simple folk songs into something more sinister. For Nick Wheeldon aficionados, there's the same characteristic: always the same flickering, bright light. The tracks follow one another: tunnels, dead ends, nocturnal drifts. Days in the sun, lost paths, dark roads, all engraved on 4 sides of vinyl. Sixteen tracks burst forth, leaving us no choice but to wander through all the eras of our short lives. The grim reaper, love, spring, lonely trees, betrayal, the cautious beginnings of a love story. Sometimes you can get lost in these Edgar Allan Poe-style stories. 'Make Art' offers a totally uninhibited and varied playground, where free jazz and soul dance together. Mixtures hitherto unknown to Nick Wheeldon. With 'Make Art,' you're in the middle of a psychedelic-folk funfair. The musical avenues open to Nick Wheeldon widen and are likely to sweep away even the slowest and most resistant of you.