(2021) Maartin Allcock - Ox15 (1999, Remastered)
Review:
As Maartin Allcock said his final farewells to us all from the stage at Cropredy in 2018, no one needed a crystal ball to predict that his musical legacy would continue to entertain and astound for years to come. Now, Talking Elephant has helped that process by re-releasing OX15, Maart’s second solo album, first released in 1999 and unavailable for a long time. By the late nineties, he’d already completed stints with Fairport Convention and Jethro Tull, collecting a strong personal following that stayed with him as he built a “solo” career developing the one-off, or more regular, collaborations that had long been his forte. For several years around the time of OX15’s first release, Maart lived in North Oxfordshire, alongside a plethora of musicians from various backgrounds, including many fellow folk-rockers. Fertile ground indeed for the development of Maart’s collaborations, so much so that he used the area’s postcode, OX15, as the album title. Also, in the liner notes, attaching a postcode to the names of any contributors resident there or in neighbouring districts. OX15 opens with Daichovo Chara, an instrumental piece Maart developed from a Bulgarian dance tune. So, from the outset, the album reveals some trademark facets of his music, an interest in Eastern European music leading to a fascination with unusual time signatures. This may have been surprising to those in 1999 who had become used to him as the member of Fairport who edged them towards a rockier version of folk-rock. But, twenty plus years on, it’s exactly what we would’ve expected of him. This opening track also makes it clear there will be few limits to the array of instruments used, either by Maart or his collaborators. To this track, he brings his two staples of electric guitar and keyboards. Joining him are Chris Leslie on fiddle, Simon Mayor, mandolin, Troy Donockley, uilleann pipes and Gerry Conway on drums and percussion. Chris and Gerry appear on many of the album’s tracks and, while there’s an obvious connection through Fairport, Maart left that band as Chris joined and didn’t overlap at all with Gerry. But there was still the Oxfordshire link to ensure they joined the album. Simon and Maart had recently been playing together in a mandolin quartet and Troy, while always very much in demand as an uilleann piper, hadn’t, as far as I can tell, previously recorded with Maart. Track 2, Whenever We See In The Dark, marks a debut for Maart, his first-ever song. Not the first time his voice had been heard on record, but his first venture into song writing, and he was particularly pleased that Ian Anderson added his flute to the arrangement. As you’d expect, given Maart’s reputation as a multi-instrumentalist, OX15 is predominantly an instrumental album with just two further songs. Chimes at Midnight features Maart’s wife Gill on lead vocal with Maart backing her. The final song, A Dream, is a collaboration between Maart and Najma Akhtar, British-born of Indian descent, Najma takes the vocals with lyrics partly in English and partly in Urdu while Maart gives the song a layered arrangement, largely playing electric and acoustic guitars but enriched with a variety of keyboard sequences and by Troy Donockley making a second appearance, his low whistle underlining Najma’s voice. Maart was always willing to add playful elements to his music, and Crash Polka is a perfect illustration. He’d bought a Roland keyboard that had various sound effects built-in and strung a few together on a cassette along with a guitar riff. When it proved popular with his neighbours down the pub, he tidied it up, adding a drum track from Gerry and a slightly more serious cello line from an old school friend, classical cellist, Anna Frazer. Equally playful, though slightly less bizarre, is the tune set that pairs The Allman Brothers Jessica with the traditional reel The Wind That Shakes The Barley. When Maart recorded this, he played the drums, percussion, bass, and piano parts all from his MIDI guitar and then, for the version on this album, he added a stunning fiddle duet from Chris Leslie and Chris Haigh that really is the icing on the cake.
Track Listing:
01 - Daichovo Chara
02 - Whenever We See the Dark
03 - Crash Polka
04 - Watermarks
05 - Chimes at Midnight
06 - Jessica & The Wind That Shakes the Barley
07 - Untiled
08 - Simple
09 - Bean a Ti Ar Lair
10 - Sand Dancer
11 - A Dream
12 - 12 Elementary
Media Report:
Genre: folk, rock
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits