Martin Archer: In Stereo Gravity

This must be about the 16th or 17th Martin Archer album to feature on Music Arcades. It's the seventh with his name on the cover, but then there are his bands and ensembles like ASK, Transient v Resident, Hornweb and Army of Briars, plus other collaborations like Combat Astronomy and Outward Sound Ensemble.

In Stereo Gravity is a double album, and on first listen it suffers some of that malaise that dogs many double albums. If I didn't already know the scope and variety of Martin's work, I'd have a really hard time assimilating all this. It's as though the album were intended as a showcase of several different ways of working (whereas earlier albums have been internally coherent while being quite different from each other). So there are several tracks featuring Julie Tippetts on vocals, but they're mostly not my thing. Julie sings quite a lot of "texts from spam emails" on this album. Anne Briggs is also an involuntary presence, in the form of "reprocessed voices" from her solo recordings. There's a track called Army of Briars — I haven't had time to remind myself how this compares with the Army of Briars album. And alongside all of these are a handful of tracks I really like: Picofarad, Nach Schriesheim, Birds Edge and In Stereo Gravity/All the Wars Were Lost (reprise).

I said "on first listen" because, although I've had the CD for over a year now, I can't remember having heard any of the music on it before. This has become something of a habit recently: thanks to the amount of listening I have to do to keep this blog watered and fed, any new purchases that don't scream out to be played immediately get shelved until such time as their number comes up to be included here. It's only now, since listening to the CD, that I've come across Martin's sleeve notes for this album (they're not on the sleeve, only on the web!).

A kind commenter recently suggested that the best Martin Archer album is one of the few that I haven't got… I was about to say, "Too bad, this is the last one I'm getting for now", but sod it, English Commonflowers is only £5, so I've put in an order.

Buy direct from Martin

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Comments

[Martin Archer]

Good to see you're still at it!

New Army of Brars record in very early stages. We have done precisely one concert.

I can now spell accordion, thanks.

You should try one of the Combat Astronomy records next. I'll send you one gratis.

All the best, Martin

[David]

Hi Martin, Thanks for the kind offer! I have already tried one Combat Astronomy album. Hmmm. When you read what I said about it, you may be grateful that I paid the going rate for it... Sorry about that. David