Canterbury Scene
Canterbury Scene is an offshoot of Burning Shed dedicated to artists related to the influential 'Canterbury' movement of the 1960s/1970s, and music operating on the experimental fringes of Progressive music.
brian hopper and robert fenner - just desserts (cd)
Hugh Hopper's brother Brian has followed up his solo CD If Ever I Am with a second collaboration with long-term musical partner Robert Fenner. Just Desserts contains much of the ambient atmosphere of their earlier work, while also adding a stronger rhythmic approach and a more pronounced World Music influence. Tracks1 Two To Tutu Too (Desert Mix) 7:04
CreditsBrian Hopper
NotesSome tracks send a backwards glance to earlier styles the pair had used whilst others are rooted in a more funky environment complete with harmonised sax riffs and Fender Stratocaster responses. Robert has exploited his collection of stringed instruments including mandolin and various twelve and six-string acoustic guitars providing both rhythmic and melodic lines on several tracks while Brian has used soprano and tenor saxes with a more jazz oriented flavour plus extensive use of the Midi Wind Controller to add lead lines with more radical sounds, some echoing ethnic instruments and some of which were generated with acoustic modelling technology, enabling hybrid sounds to be formed which would otherwise be physically impossible as no equivalent acoustic instruments could exist. These are layered over a variety of evocative sounding synth voices and pads to enable them to blend comfortably into the overall sound of each track as it was developed. The programmed percussion elements were based on both real and synthesised drum samples, which enabled the generation of the desired feel and drive appropriate for each track.
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Comments
A funny cover of eating desserts in the deserts, Brian Hopper and Robert Fenner improvise together with far away whirls of the Middle East in the background, with rhythmic dromedaries and dunes, Midiwind controllers recalling the Arabian deserts, improvisations on sax, guitars and sequenced sounds, keyboards and different rhythms. (Robert Fenner also used 6 and 12 string guitars). While this could have created a kind of soundtrack, the rhythmic section pulls the listener mostly very much in the centre of it, creating a musical fashionable nomadic tent, with desserts on the table. On “Indian Summer” a tribe (not really belonging to the desert) appears with moments on the background as well. The music is really enjoyable. But when hearing a full release in this style it also reveals how the real centre is from a more stagnate but luxurious place than a real desert with desserts; This has more a home cooked made energy, with a fata morgana fantasy of a different world. The dessert only has fractions of the desert, beamed as a background image. These bits of fantasy made many tracks fashionable with worldmusic-sequenced flavours.
Gerald Van Waes