CD Review: Kaz Simmons - Dandelions

Kaz Simmons - Dandelions
(Fast Awake Records FA-UKCD02. CD REview by Chris Parker

Like her previous recordings (Take Me Home on 33 Records, Different Smile on Fast Awake), singer/songwriter Kaz Simmons's Dandelions is an intensely personal, not to say downright intimately confessional album, detailing her state of mind regarding personal insecurities, reaction to romantic rejection, even travelling problems etc., but the insinuating charm of her melodies and her easy-on-the-ear vocals ensure that her admirers will find as much to enjoy here as from her back catalogue.

She also has great taste in backing musicians: pianist Ivo Neame, bassist/arranger Riaan Vosloo, reeds player James Allsopp, drummers Dave Smith and Tim Giles, among others, are all involved in a classy, understated production.

Her slightly fey lyrics might not display the brazenness of much contemporary Facebook-generation personal discourse, but sympathetic souls will appreciate her gentle candour and sincere ingenuousness, and the album as a whole certainly provides a welcome antidote to the macho posturing of much contemporary pop, male and female.

Launch gig: 1 June, the Forge, Camden

CD Review: Twelves - The Adding Machine

Twelves - The Adding Machine
(Babel BDV1088, CD Review by Chris Parker)

With the addition of electric guitarist Rob Updegraff, the former Twelves Trio have not only become Twelves, but have beefed up their sound, making it rockier and more hard-hitting in the process.

Bassist Riaan Vosloo explains that the original trio, touring on the back of their first album, kept finding themselves playing to rock-oriented audiences, so 'learned to "put it out a bit", and to experiment', and The Adding Machine (the title comes from a 1923 expressionist play by Elmer Rice) encapsulates the musical results of this change, containing as it does a heady mix of Prime Time-like keening and Sco/Lo-type driving urgency.

With tenor player Mark Hanslip and drummer Tim Giles completing the line-up -– both experienced operators in the fertile hinterland between free jazz and more structured playing, the former primarily with Outhouse, the latter with the likes of Age of Steam and Fraud -– Twelves are well equipped to move, as they do, between dramatic, anthemic rock and tumbling freer music. On this album's seven in-band originals and one arrangement of a traditional folk song ('Shallow Brown') they perfectly capture the spirit of Rice's play, which also dramatises a shifting emotional world of dark revenge, unsettling fantasy and hope.