02/07/2020
Tomorrow is release day for 'Cestrian' by Chris Riley.
We may have mentioned this once or twice this week but hey, we are really proud of this release. To me, this album sums up a lot of what we wanted to do when we first set this label up. We do really see this release as the first in a new phase for the label.
So, tomorrow, Friday 3rd of July is possibly the last time Bandcamp are dropping their fees for the day. This means we, as a label, get 100% of the money from any sales made tomorrow. We already don't charge much for our music so any little bit helps. We take no money personally for ourselves and all sales go back into running the label and making more music, be this new cables, a new 4 track and the like. It all helps.
Below we have our first album review from our new in-house label scribe VH Monks, who takes us on a journey through 'Cestrain'. We are hoping this becomes a regular feature for most releases (past and present) if we can tie him down long enough.
Before that though, did we mention 'Cestrian' (out tomorrow) will be available for the jaw-droppingly low price of £4 for the digital download and only £10 for the CD (which includes a digital download and various extras).
If you need any more encouragement...
Take it away VH Monks
Chris Riley
Cestrian (Nice Mind Records, NICE017)
25 years in the making, give or take and roundabout, and we have the debut album from Chester-le-Street native Chris Riley. This disregards, of course, any and all of the many projects, and bands, and EPs, that Chris has been involved with over the generation spanning period. And while many of these songs have been sitting in a canister for a while, the creativity of lockdown has established others, and formed the whole into being.
It’s an album with definite form and identity if at times a little schizophrenic. The 13 song strong collection is laid out explicitly, per the neon psych artwork, as Side One and Side Two, despite there not being a vinyl release (yet, say the hopeful). A glance suggests a more carefree and buoyant first, made up of 8 songs, versus a sprawling and diverse reverse with the balancing 5.
The tracks are full of life and direction – the titles alone beckon with names + places + references, none more so than the titular track. Cestrian – a native or resident of any place called Chester. There is an affinity of localism going on in the vocals throughout, the gentle vibes and warm welcome tones, sometimes unexpectedly fragile, in Chris’ homely dialect.
Chester-le-Street is a market town in the North East, born from shadows of a hardworking history. Roman forts to St Cuthbert, coal mining to viaduct, the Jarrow March to cricket. Heart and heat, power and romance; as with so many towns a history and story that should draw you in, comfort and influence you, perhaps not dawning for many until they have long gone. Chris, still local, takes a moment to reflect on what makes a Cestrian, before suggesting: “Piss taking is common.”
The album launches with the first single, Syracuse, a haunting acoustic refrain of lifting tilting picks, on a western slope to an eastern star. Finding some hope in the darkness, stumbling across home when you’re lost. You’re carried on his calm and rhythmic flow as it spirals to an epiphany of magic lands and roundabouts.
Pockets Full of Rime follows fine, mayhaps the most traditional fare for you to takeaway. Warm, tender, forests of simple wonder; Jansch like mood and the tales of awe from what lies before you, amplified gently through the eyes of the troubadour, all-seeing for certains. Later, we dial into the Mad Machine, more delicate than it sounds, a nervous and gently tumultuous moment, Davy Graham outside the shelter from the storm. Sharing-troubling-controlled-hurting-shaking-dreaming-scantier than Pockets but from the same family.
There lays in the midst of Side One a trio of tracks that burst open the dams, starting the evolution of the record. Kirsten’s Song is just a joy. An ode to someone the songwriter doesn’t seem to know too well, but who he is inspired to write about to excise her disappointment that their name doesn’t frequent songs in the same way as, say, Mandy (names may not have been changed to protect the innocent). It’s fun, funny and a little bit frisky in flight. It carries the tradition of a good time storytime folk track, with a modern country bluesy trip. There will be outtakes of this in Chris’ archives surely, with friends bashing this out with tambourines and shakers and breaking down to laughter. See The Riley Bootleg Sessions Volume 26.
Charlotte’s Tune brings a sweet short instrumental interlude, although don’t let this reviewer’s reminiscence of school with the recorder, spittle and peeking through shoulders looking for parents avert your attention. Gaia’s Answer is a moodier affair, dark and sultry. Labelmate WVP hover and vibrate behind, urging you to focus as your memory starts to shift. Like walking up some steps chiselled into the side of a mountain and having to take a couple back every now and then as the pressure starts to pinch and pulse.
So OK, this first side may not all be barefoot and fancy free, but Fortune All Around lightens the air, albeit with the eagerness of uncertainty. You have to love the hesitant urgency manifesting here, the militant demands beating behind, words tumbling into each other, chords charging.
Before metaphorically turning the record over, we close as we started, with a single, dropped a couple of weeks afore the album it was birthed from. When the Roses are In Bloom is quite a powerful little number for all its guises. Sways with an authority of hope, pretty and lapping to the shore of a hamlet shire.
Autumn Colours doesn’t open your second side, but it’s a classy number that could be the next single. A real treat, maybe the most accessible song on here if you need that kind of thing. Just this flow and ease from the guitar and words that bring you in with a shiver, a shake, and a pop-of-this-kind hero’s welcome.
It’s A Fistful of Quavers (or For a Few Crisps More?) that brings you into the fold before this, an instrumental reminder that it’s a brave man who whistles on a song! Chris does evoke the western plains and spirit of Clint and Ennio, deep guitar drawls picking grit from its teeth and drawing first in a dual.
You could be forgiven for missing Apple of Your Eye in the light of what lies ahead, but don’t. It washes over you like a rainbow waterfall, cleansing ahead of your purging, the run up before the dive in.
Where did The Dirge come from? The opening and latterly guitar track, like duelling Medieval Animals, verging to classical in moments, tercians being heaved to the King’s table. Then over sonic measures, the spoken word calm of calamity, a homely nightmarish romantic ugliness that ends too soon. Thunder claps, the echo hits, immediately bellowing for a Chemical Brothers spiral of beats and largeness. There’s a remix to hanker for.
There has been a wind blowing behind the whole album, and Cestrian is the gale coming through. Feels something of a landmark moment, a crowning achievement that consolidates the dexterity and divergence of the album’s themes and sounds. With a compilation that has lived and breathed over a number of years, the hive of disparity is expected perhaps, but also very welcome in how Chris delivers it. WVP are back on these latter couple of closing tracks too, and collaboration is no mean feat to have work so well. This final howl is an instrumental montage, delirious, stammering, swaggering near epic slam, a heathen refusal to the traditional tag.
This album refracts a myriad of lights and darks, a kaleidoscope of maturity + jollity, folk + prog, poetry + imagery, whistling + recorders, acoustic refrains + vibrating sonic beams.
On his Bandcamp page, Chris Riley calls himself a ‘singer-songwriter’. Is he taking the p**s?
VH Monks – July 2020
