Last year, Rik Loveridge released, under the Single Helix name, Prog Gnosis, an album recorded following a diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease. It was a thoroughly enjoyable album, and you can see my review of this by clicking on the button below.
Come the New Year, in short order, Rik has released another new work, Generations, and you can listen to and purchase this at the Bandcamp page, https://rikloveridge.bandcamp.com/album/generations The album once again features the exceptional talent of Nick Fletcher (winner of my 2023 Instrumental Album of the Year – click on the link at the top of the page for my awards), together with Sam Loveridge-Miller and one year old granddaughter, Willow Loveridge. I predict a long and happy career ahead!
Before I discuss the album as a whole and embed some of the fine music therein for you, a few words about its context. The foreword to this is profound and moving:
“With approaching death, I find comfort that my passing leaves space and resource for the next generation”.
The title track’s lyrics are inspired by a poem written by Hamish MacNeil (aka Macaque), and I recreate the words below, which I think are simply wonderful and perfectly fitting for the cultural intent I hold for this website. His third poetry collection, Mosaic, is available on Amazon’s Kindle, incidentally:
As men forget and are forgotten
The stones remember
And wood remembers, keeps
Records in rings, and history
Sings through other things buried
In the earth.
We rub our lives against them
In ignorance, unpick the fabric
Of the past one kicked stone, one
Dug ditch at a time. The broken
Threads of lives fray like nerves, unravel,
Reach out to touch and teach us,
Our ancestors, generation upon generation.
The mighty works of the Celts and Brittons,
The Romans, Saxons, Normans, all their
Oxymandian constructions still speak from
Open graves, murmur beneath the weight
Of new vitality, wait to be heard again, while
My sons' bones and their grandsons' bones
Will join my bones and my grandfather's father's. The dust will be richer, but
The memories will be gone.
So, off we go with Awaken, to welcome the new day. There are some lovely soundscapes presented to us in the opening bars, ghostly guitar, synths, light jazz drum/percussion, and some very pretty orchestration, just about the perfect way to spend the opening minutes of the day musically. It is embedded below, a track which I have started playing with my first cup of tea, loving the classic keys and brass heralding the waking period and a very understated guitar solo. Listen carefully to that glockenspiel in the background. A cracking start.
Didn’t Mean It can probably apply to every single petty argument or disagreement in human history – it’s when the protagonist DID mean it is the time for the other half to start worrying a wee bit. The bassline on this, set against the organ, is noticeably deep, with a spoken vocal. “Words are forever”, the regret (and love) pouring out of this. A nice bluesy number featuring a particularly delicate guitar solo.
Exposure II is very different in sound and mood. It is an interesting piece of electronica, quite industrial in its impact, and influenced by Gabriel & Fripp (“for all Frippites”) in their Scratch & Exposure period, I do like the brass effects and synths which lead to that particular type of eccentric guitar burst, with the flute then bringing a lovely pastoral feel set against the keys. Very good, and one for fans of experimental rock in the finest classic tradition.
Forever Young has the descriptor “elixir chaser” attached to it, and I find this interesting in a wider context. I read a quality newspaper, but even in this, you are bombarded daily by messages and cod articles extolling the virtues of this diet, or that exercise regime, with some “influencer” informing a gullible public that he or she holds the key to a healthy life, and that is before we get to the “news” stories telling us that drinking a couple of glasses of wine is good/bad for us, dependent upon the day. Fletcher produces a classy guitar, and the keys are urgent in parts in a piece which is almost post punk in its feel. The final minute has some gorgeous notes set against a heavy background. See what you think by listening to it below.
The title track is also embedded below, with Rik’s words based on that poem I recreated above. Fletcher again provides the guitar, and the debutant granddaughter features. Those words that the soil waits to welcome, reach out to touch and teach us, are profound, carrying with them an acceptance of the inevitable fate, but also a message for those future generations that they can learn from our lives, good and bad. The guitar solo is, again, a clear reference to Fripp, but with a unique stamp upon it. The effects are profound with the child crying out. It is very good, and I wish it were quite a lot longer.
Earth Reborn tells us that our planet will manage quite nicely without us, thank you, and I have been thinking about this quite a lot this past week, with two storms in rapid succession battering the West Wales countryside, each year the weather seeming to strike us with ever more intensity, as if the world is protesting loudly and clearly that we need to change, and pretty damned smartish. The guitar work is wonderful, and I love the sounds Loveridge provides with layered keys and voices in a track which is a strange heady blues, prog rock, and jazz mix. It is one that rewards repeated listening, so why not do so with it embedded below?
Lazy Day (Oh, such a perfect day) opens with a whimsical feel to the opening notes, but as the vocals and track proceed, it develops into a simple love song, a paeon to those times when you only have the company of the love of your life and bathe yourself in that. I love the synths on this, the organ, a deep bassline, guitar notes which remind one of Hackett very strongly, and simply an honest tale of a heartfelt affection. A strong contender even at this early stage of the year for “Love Song of 2024”.
The penultimate track is Post Truth State. “They’ll repeat their truth till I see the light...”, again something I have thought about quite a lot recently, with politicians of all hues repeating the same old trite soundbites in the manner of corporate adverts in the hope that they will register in minds and produce a few more grubby votes. If I hear “we have a plan, stick with it, or it’s back to square one” once more, I’ll write the silly bugger a letter telling him where to stick it. It is the longest track on the album at just over five minutes. Truth is the victim increasingly in our modern political system, and Loveridge puts across his satirical disdain extremely well against a backdrop of distorted chords and experimental noises, but also some more gorgeous bass fretwork and a dreamy jazz percussive sound, with a military anthemic feel to the final passage. Enjoy it below.
The album closes with Road Dreamer, which has an interesting story behind it, referencing Elliot Bristow’s Road Dreams US “sojourn”. Bristow was a traveller, filmmaker, and writer who built up a huge Super 8 film travelogue record of 1970’s America with countless road trips. The opening passage is simply stunning with its keys and brass in true cinematic style before the song moves into its main pastoral theme. Close your eyes and imagine the subject taking in the sights and sounds of that vast, enticing, but also dangerous landscape, the keys and guitar playing off against each other, the orchestration evoking the dream of a wide open and free land in which all men and women are equal and a bulwark against totalitarianism, but in the sense of real people, not the media and politicians.
To close this review, Generations is perhaps the prime example of why it takes me a little while to set down my words for a review, and think carefully about how and what I write, because this is not an album that one takes lightly or publishes a review of quickly. It reveals more with each listen. It is deeply intelligent and is the work of a musician and songwriter who is at a crossroads in his life but determined to share with us this journey. It is an honest album and one which will be played in this house for a long time to come.
Very highly recommended.