Group Listening with Laraaji, Neu!, Arthur Russell and Robbie BashoInbox
Group Listening
‘All of a Sudden’
New reinterpretation of a Laraaji classic with video from Nic Finch (Chameleonic) Check it out here
Taken from upcoming album ‘Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works, Vol.2’ Released 28th January 2022 on PRAH Recordings http://ffm.to/grouplistening
Following the announcement of their new album with an arrangement of Neu’s classic ‘Seeland’, today Group Listening release a reinterpretation of one of Laraaji’s more beautiful new age pop moments ‘All of a Sudden’ – accompanied by a video by Nic Finch (chameleonic)
Featuring helmet sculptures by H. Hawkline and set on the edge of Pentrebane, the video for ‘All of a Sudden’ derives inspiration from DIY rave music videos and New Age mysticism, we are privy to rituals invoking imagined futures and displacement of realities performed around a mid-1960’s water tower, locally known as ‘The Lollipop’ or ‘Golf Ball’. You can check it out here.
Group Listening’s brilliant first album, Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works, Vol.1, was a haunting, meditative and lovingly considered selection box of musical reworkings. It featured rearranged tracks by the likes of Arthur Russell, Brian Eno and Robert Wyatt. But it was also much more than that. In making this record of reimagined musical works, Stephen Black [Clarinet] and Paul Jones [Piano] were two musicians doing what all music fans do: comparing favorite tracks, turning each piece over for new meaning and developing a musical understanding of each other in the process.
Fast forward a couple of years, a remix album of Vol.1, 12” What’s A Girl To Do? – featuring a re-work of the Fatima Yamaha club staple, an EP of re-arrangements with Cate Le Bon from her LP Reward, a remix of Lambchop’s ‘This Is What I Wanted To Tell You’, and the pair started Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works Vol.2 from an altogether different vantage point.
Taken as a whole, there’s a gorgeous ambience to the record but that shouldn’t be confused for Volume 2 being an ambient listen. The organic understanding that Black and Jones have of each other’s processes as musicians means that the music sounds incredibly fluid, but the overall tranquillity of the record is made up of dozens of small nuances. It’s a puzzle that’s been put together just below the surface as the duo react with a warm emotion to the songs they’ve chosen.
It’s in the way that Group Listening are able to prod, probe and contort the self-defined parameters that they’ve set themselves that makes Clarinet & Piano: Selected Works Vol.2 such an intriguing listen – and it’s the love and care they’ve taken over it that makes these versions entirely their own.
Tracklist:
2. Blue Crystal Fire
3. Y Cwsg
4. Hollywood Dream Trip
5. Take Care
6. Camberwick Green
8. This Was Us
9. Five Hundred Miles
Live dates
28/02 – The Bell, Bath
01/03 – The Rose Hill, Brighton
02/03 – Elsewhere, Margate
04/03 – Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
11/03 – Kings Place, London
12/03 – Strange Brew, Bristol
13/03 – The Cornish Bank, Falmouth
15/03 – Hare and Hounds, Birmingham
16/03 – The Castle Hotel, Manchester
17/03 – Future Yard, Birkenhead
18/03 – Ame Space, Huddersfield
24/03 – Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich
25/03 – Cobalt Studios, Newcastle
26/03 – The Glad Café, Glasgow
27/03 – The Waiting Room, Stockton-on-Tees
28/03 – The Prince Albert, Stroud
Pre-order: https://prah.plctrmm.to/S