Music Arcades: Various: Arcane

One of the troubles with this blog is that research for one album can lead to desire for another. I mean "research" in the 21st century sense, of course: Google, Wikipedia and casual foraging from there. One such forage alerted me to the existence of Arcane, and more specifically of the inclusion on it of music by the late, great Simon Jeffes that I hadn't heard. I had to have it.

The sleeve notes for Arcane explain how the album came about, a recorded legacy of a week-long experimental session at Real World studios in August 1992. The notes are written by recently-featured Clive Bell. I might have expected the late, great Robert Sandall to have written them. Because I'm pretty sure I remember him talking of this session on Mixing It, and describing how Simon Jeffes' humble egalitarian attitude contrasted with the paternalism of Peter Gabriel, who was host and patron of the event.

Mixing It also premiered the original version of Cage Dead, recorded at the Real World session with poet Michael Horowitz contributing some spoken word vocals, which is included on this album.

Despite the elegance of its conceit (a 4'33" piece based around the notes C-A-G-E D-E-A-D, in tribute to John Cage, who died on the first day of the session), Cage Dead has never been a favourite of mine. There's also an alternate, non-Penguin Cafe Orchestra version of the PCO's Yodel 3 from Union Cafe. But Clive Bell says his favourite piece on the album is Chinese Canon, and I'm with him. It's a collaboration between Jeffes and two Chinese musicians, Cheng Yu and Zhou Yu.

"It was conceived and happened in about five minutes" ([said] Simon Jeffes). "The tune resulted from noodling around, and no one interfered to pin it down. I like it because it's very simple and open: it isn't a case of the westerners getting the Chinese musicians to do something, or even understanding what it is they're doing."

It's a wonderful track, an almost perfect splicing of Jeffes and the Orient, reflecting his deep empathy with all things oriental.

Chinese Canon alone is worth the £3.19 (inc p&p) I paid on the Amazon marketplace. Alongside it are some pieces of passing interest in which Alex Gifford (of the Grid and Properllerheads) seems to be prime mover. Jane Siberry, Andy Sheppard, Nana Vasconcelos and Nigel Kennedy also feature. Thinking about it, I might have expected to Clive Bell to have been invited to the session, shakuhachi in hand, as a player, rather than a writer.