It can be a real pain in the arse when great albums go out of print – their fame doesn’t stop spreading, people don’t stop hearing them at friend’s houses, and what generally happens is that otherwise law-abiding non-CD-duping peoples start doing CDR copies for their friends.
So it’s always a cause for celebration when a classic gets reissued, especially when it happens because the artist has bought back the rights for their own work.
Such is the case with ‘Transparent Music’ by BJ Cole – a classic near-ambient album of stuff a long way from his recent excursions into IDM/Breakbeat/noisy stuff. Transparent Music is a collection of tracks that highlight the impressionistic, floaty meditative side of the pedal steel in a way that pretty much no other steel player has ever done. Listening to BJ’s arrangements of works by Debussy, Ravel and Erik Satie it’s hard not to imagine that these guys would have been writing for the pedal steel had it been invented during their lifetimes, such is the remarkable stylistic fit of the instrument’s timbre and early 20th century impressionism.
BJ’s own tracks sit beautifully alongside those arrangements, and the whole effect is mesmerising. It’s available to order from BJ’s website and I thoroughly recommend it… or you’ll be able to buy it from him at the Recycle Collective gig at Darbucka on january 12th (shit, that’s next week!)
Soundtrack – BJ Cole, ‘Transparent Music.