a r t i s t : The One Ensemble Of Daniel Padden
t i t l e : st
d a t e : 2002
l a b e l : catsup plate
g e n r e : Folk
r l s. d a t e : Feb/2009
t r a c k s : 12
b i t r a t e : VBRkbps
s i z e : 57,5 MB
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As a member of the U.K.'s Volcano the Bear since 1995, Daniel
Padden has been involved in the creation of some of the most
compelling and challenging music in recent memory. Drawing on
the work of Robert Wyatt, Faust, This Heat, and the like,
Volcano the Bear quickly developed a strong and devoted
following and released record on such notable labels as United
Dairies, Misra, Beta-Lactam Ring. All of this, however, cannot
prepare one for the revelation that is Padden's other project,
The One Ensemble of Daniel Padden. While there are obvious
connections with his Volcano the Bear work (and VTB members
make appearances from time to time), The One Ensemble of
Daniel Padden, is really in a universe all its own, strange
and beautiful and unique.
As an album, The One Ensemble is pretty difficult to pin down.
In much the same way as Richard Youngs and Simon Wickham-
Smith, or the early Third Ear Band, Padden uses traditional
folk structures as the basis for much of songs here. But
other, even more esoteric, influences are at work here as
well: Southeast Asian traditional musics, acoustic jazz
flourishes, perhaps even the mystical minimalism of Terry
Riley. So what does all this mean for the listener? A strange
and beautiful amalgam of (mostly) wordless vocals, stumbling
piano, scurrying cello, mournful kazoo interludes, deranged
waltzes, and stuff that's totally unidentifiable combined into
Padden's skewed and wayward outsider music.
What's most important about The One Ensemble of Daniel Padden
ù at least to these ears ù is the truly epic mournfulness that
permeates it all. This is about mood, folks, and Padden emotes
like few can. This song cycle plays at times like a funeral
dirge, at others like a carnivalesque choir of gypsies, but
whatever the mood, this music is intimate, beautiful, and
deeply-felt.
Edition of 500 copies in handmade silkscreened digipaks.
(http://www.catsupplate.com/catalog/714_oneEnsemble.htm)
Daniel Padden - music
Mary Wells: violin on 3, singing on 12.
Andra Kulans: violin on 3, 4, and 12.
Kenneth Broom: saxophone on 5.
Jeremy Barnes: piano and pedal organ on 12.
Laurence Coleman: acoustic guitar on 6.
Nick Mott: ballaphon on 6.
Recorded between 2000 and 2001 with the exception of 8, which
was recorded years several years earlier.
"An astonishing solo album...an epic voyage of beautifully
composed experimental music...A god-like record." (Steve
Hanson, Careless Talk Costs Lives / Ptolemaic Terrascope)
"Strikingly beautiful at times, Padden's music truly comes
from another place. Wholly unique and lush with feeling, "The
One Ensemble of Daniel Padden" is a rare and unclassifiable
masterpiece." (Other Music)
"An album that is so distinctly unique in its sound that it's
hard to think of any comparisons at all." - Mats Gustafsson,
Ptolemaic Terrascope.
"His soft deregulation of sounds obeys an internal logic, a
secret unity which makes it all the more penetrating. Swift
and Carroll are dead, but their Jack 'o' Lanterns are still
dancing." (Les Inrockuptibles)
"He grasps past the legible edges of time in the way that
Third Ear Band or Art Ensemble of Chicago (in their breath-
space moments) would, to a raw earth music where the dead
voices gather... The past is still alive, less repetitive and
imitative, and more crossbred and permeable, a peculiar new
strain of familiar sound twisted once again." (Luna Kafe)
(http://brainwashed.com/padden/)
(http://www.myspace.com/oneensemble)
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01-The Handmade Sisters Of Devotion [01:18]
02-Circus Homunculus [02:31]
03-Sleep Between The Brows Of All My Eyes [02:23]
04-Remnant Kings [08:24]
05-Scratch Apparatus [04:02]
06-It's Wonderful To Think About Tigers [03:15]
07-The Incomprehensible And The Numinous [04:19]
08-Fledgeling [02:51]
09-Spiders On Ice [03:34]
10-The Tadpole Alphabet [04:33]
11-Chasm Dave [05:31]
12-Grand As Pipes [05:52]
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48:33 min