The Room In The Tower

Description

On this, his twelfth CD for the old firm, Bob is back in pop-as-you-wish-it-was, mode with an impeccable suite of eleven (ostensibly) straight ahead songs, each its own world but united by echoes of the best of pop history; exquisite production values and novel but model arrangements - and absolutely no fat anywhere, not a note wasted and no opportunity for pleasing - or surprising - detail missed. It's a joy from start to finish and its sum is greater than its parts. Playing all the (many) instruments and synchronised like Siamese octuplets, Bob's signature is a song form that's uniquely his: fiendishly complicated but highly accessible, with a sound that's instantly recognisable - accounting for his small but fanatical following. Apart from some great lyrics, this time out there are more than the usual scattering of high precision prompt-a-gasp guitar solos, as well as a reality-challenging vocalisation of a grandsire double. Not to mention a passing storm. A tour de force. Bob Drake (b.1957) has played a lot of instruments with - and has engineered - all manner of bands, from the early 1970's on. Between 1978-1989 he played an important role in Denver's underground music scene, and was a founding member of both Thinking Plague and Hail. In the early 1990s, when he was living in Los Angeles, he wound up engineering sessions with just about everybody from Ice Cube to Shirley MacLaine and Tina Turner, and it was there that he met David Kerman and became part of 5UU's. It was also around this time he began to write and record his own solo albums. Since 1994 he has lived in his home studio in Southern France, where he has played on and recorded and/or mixed hundreds of albums by artists from around the world. He fronts Bob Drake's Cabinet of Curiosities and was also a member of the Peter Blegvad Quintet, The Science Group and Vril. Wearing another hat, he is well known for his definitive re-masterings of classic albums by Art Bears, Henry Cow, ZNR, Cassiber and others. He has a not insubstantial online following.