TINHORN launches "Tinhorn Home Companion Library Vol. 1."
No mere appetising six-song label sampler, this a mini-album debut of some considerable luxury. Three original songs each from CONTINENTAL FILM NIGHT (featuring David Sheppard of Ellis Island Sound, State River Widening, etc), Javier Martí (Mudo), and Peter Wix (Jean Paul Special), and TELLERMAN, solo project of Peter Wix. Shades here of everything from Charles Bukowski, Nino Rota or Serge Gainbsourg to Calexico, Can, and Robert Wyatt.
CONTINENTAL FILM NIGHT is the tripartite collaboration of Spaniard Javier Martí (Mudo), Anglo-Spaniard Peter Wix (Jean Paul Special) and London-based David Sheppard (State River Widening, Ellis Island Sound, The Wisdom Of Harry...). Basing their recordings on spontaneous extemporisations initially captured in Valencia toward the close of 2004, the trio developed their unique, atmosphere-laden music at their own small studios in Spain and London. Exchanging MP3s and then reuniting for live, in-the-room acoustic vérité recordings, along with drum, string and brass overdubs at various Valencian studios, CFN’s sound developed as a potent conflation of Martí’s quixotic electric guitar, dark earth vocal stylings and Van Dyke Parks-like arrangement skills, Wix’s grainy, electronic soundscaping, skeletal guitar and occasional crooned vocal and Sheppard’s elegiac pastoral touches on melodica, dulcimer and all things stringed.
United by a love of laughing, yew trees, and miscellaneous film music, CFN evoke innocence and romance by way of harsh reality and tearful poignancy.
Their songs and instrumental etudes suggest Wilco remixed by the Penguin Cafe Orchestra – though CFN’s signature is that rarest of things in these days of off-the-peg rock homage and corporate sound stylists: a daringly original sound.
Bursting with look-you-in-the-eye melody yet underscored with stark, bruised ambiences with the oddbreathtaking hairpin turn, you could call this ‘psychedelic-folk-pop soundtrack music re-booted for the 21st century’ and still be only halfway to pinning down CFN’s elegant singularity.
TELLERMAN is the nom-du-disc of exiled Englishman Peter Wix, ( of acclaimed duo Jean Paul Special (“The frozen passion of Robert Forster, the lyricism of Leonard Cohen” – Rock Delux). Blending the kind of urbane political satire and defiant poetics of his erstwhile combo with a freshly sharpened take on timeless, sophisticated pop chanson, Tellerman represents the most vivid and direct work Wix has yet committed to tape.
Honed in Valencia, Spain, with production assistance from State River Widening’s David Sheppard and wonderfully expansive arrangements from Javier Martí, Tellerman’s songs are a beguiling marriage of bold primary colour and intricate detail. Cellos saw, trombones resound; drums roll and guitars thrum, but always at the centre of this rich web of intrigue is Wix’s intimate, conspitorial voice. His slowly unravelling narratives scan the globe like a giant all-seeing movie tracking shot, pausing only for comic effect here, nape hair-sensitising melody there.
Tellerman’s touchstones are wry Serge Gainsbourg chanson, Scott Walker-esque Grand Guignol balladry, oblique, Brecht-Weil melodrama and velveteen, 50’s-tinged rock’n’roll as imagined by David Lynch. But that’s only half the story. Wix and his cohorts make bold, ambitious music that brooks no argument, skating right over petty trifles like musical fashion with a flame of wit aloft, sights set on a far nobler prize. It’s the kind of thing Roxy Music pulled off half a lifetime ago, but no one has really dared since - until now. Wix likes to refer to it, without a trace of irony, as ‘adult entertainment’ – and after one listen, you’ll know exactly what he means.
