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Robert Wyatt - Comicopera ( 2007)

On October 8 2007 Robert Wyatt is to release his new album, and first for Domino. Called 'Comicopera', the 16 track album will be available on both CD and double vinyl formats. It was produced by Robert himself, and recorded at his home in Louth as well as Phil Manzanera's Gallery Studio. 'Comicopera' is divided into three Acts - 'Lost in Noise', 'The Here and The Now', and 'Away with the Fairies', and is initially more diverse and live sounding than it's predecessor 'Cuckooland'. Featuring a cast of musicians including Brian Eno, Paul Weller and Phil Manzanera, Robert says he was keen for the album to capture the sound of a group of musicians playing in the room together, but more importantly to have friends playing together. "Music isn't just an abstract pleasure, it is a company, when you play a record. Why I like Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, the Big Bands - is because every character in the band is identifiable as that person - there's this group of humans in a room" he says. It is this that gives 'Comicopera' a sense of spontaneity, despite its deliberate pacing and construction as something of a three Act 'Opera' "It's really about the unpredictable mischief of real life - it's sort of chaotic our life. It's about humans and the things we turn to, and looking for fun and stimulus and meaning and stuff." Robert Wyatt

Tracklisting:

Act One: Lost In Noise

01 Stay Tunes

02 Just As You Are

03 You You

04 A.W.O.L.

05 Anachronist

Act Two: The Here and The Now

06 A Beautiful Peace

07 Be Serious

08 On The Town Square

09 Mob Rule

10 A Beautiful War

11 Out of The Blue

Act Three: Away With The Fairies

12 Del Mondo

13 Cancion de Julieta

14 Pastafari

15 Fragment

16 Hasta Siempre

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Robert Wyatt Conducts Comicopera With Eno, Weller.

Also with Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera.

Psych rock's favorite Santa Claus, Robert Wyatt, returns this fall with his latest longplayer, the self-produced Comicopera. It's the former Soft Machinist's first disc for Domino Records, and it comes down chimneys a little prematurely this year, on September 24. Wyatt enlisted a few jolly elves for this one, including longtime pals and past Wyatt album contributors Brian Eno, Paul Weller (The Jam, the Style Council), and Phil Manzanera (Roxy Music, Quiet Sun). Also on board were several noted jazz musicians, Robert's wife Alfie Benge, and something the liner notes call the "enotron," which apparently refers to the voice of Brian Eno as manipulated by Robert Wyatt. I so totally want an enotron for Christmas this year.

Like any good opera, Comicopera is divided into three "acts," laid across one compact disc/slab of vinyl/iTunes playlist. On the LP's third act, Wyatt delves into the poetry and music of Federico Garcia Lorca, Italian rockers CCCP, and Cuban composer Carlos Puebla. Comicopera's opening track, meanwhile, is a cover of a tune by Norwegian singer-songwriter AnjaGarbarek.

Comicopera follows up Wyatt's 2003 LP Cuckooland, and next time you get the Trivial Pursuit card that asks, "Who wrote the press release for Robert Wyatt's Comicopera?" you'll get your damn pie piece, because it's Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip. According to Taylor, "There is so much to find, and to return to, in the generous company of this record."

Robert Wyatt: Comicopera

"It's really about the unpredictable mischief of real life - it's sort of chaotic our life. It's about humans and the things we turn to, and looking for fun and stimulus and meaning and stuff." Robert Wyatt.

Robert Wyatt is one of my favourite singers, writers, makers of wonderful music. It is with pleasure that I can introduce you to this, his latest album, and first for Domino.

I first discovered Robert Wyatt's music when borrowing, and then stealing, Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard from a library. Then came a second-hand purchase of the 'Shipbuilding' 7", which I played repeatedly, not even thinking to flip it over. A few years later, it was my near-20 years late discovery of the Mid Eighties compilation and Old Rottenhat that really fixed my glue to Wyatt's music. I was obsessed (and not least by that very b side to 'Shipbuilding' - 'Memories of You'). It seemed in Robert's 'home' recordings, these unfinished-sounding, and barely accompanied, odds and ends - covers, originals, spoken pieces - with just wonderful synthesizers, percussion and piano to support the familiarly fragile voice, I had found home. I've been delving further and repeatedly into his deep well for a few years now, and it is no surprise to even find his songs cropping up in many of my DJ sets, as well as my home listening. With Dondestan, Shleep, Cuckooland and now Comicopera, Wyatt seems to have found his own 'home' music - each record intimate and sophisticated, played with (the suggestion of) ease and curiosity. And also fun. Comicopera, divided into three Acts - 'Lost in Noise', 'The Here and The Now', and 'Away with the Fairies', continues where these albums had left off, but it is initially less dense than Cuckooland, and more light and live sounding. Robert says he was keen to have the sound of a group of musicians playing in the room together, but more importantly, to have friends (furthermore than musicians who play these particular instruments), playing together:

"Music isn't just an abstract pleasure, it is company, when you play a record. Why I like Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus, the Big Bands - is because every character in the band is identifiable as that person - there's this group of humans in a room." (Wyatt).That gives this record its sense of spontaneity, despite its deliberate pacing and construction as something of a three Act 'Opera': "Musically, the changes are quite abrupt. And the narrator actually shifts. At the end of the second section I'm both the euphoric bomber ('A Beautiful War'), and the apoplectic bombed person ('Out of the Blue'). It shifts about in a way that I haven't consciously done in the past."

In Act One, the album opens with a plea for patience - Anja Garbarek's 'Stay Tuned', and as stated, a fair amount of light has crept in (from which end of the tunnel is it not clear...). We are treated to love songs (of sorts), before Act Two threatens to brighten further, with a community and carnival-esque feel pervading the mood; before at the close of the Act, the bombing takes place. Act Three, 'Away with the Fairies', the darkest, and most noisy, recalls some of the unsettling mood of his 80s productions, where odd synths underpin the voice and minor chords are wedged next to each other in close chromatic proximity. Act Three also marks the shift from songs in English language to Italian and Spanish - a pivotal moment in the record from which point onwards Robert claims he refused to sing in English, as a protest -

"After the bombing - it's to do with feeling completely alienated from Anglo-American culture at that point. Just sort of being silent as an English-speaking person, because of this fucking war. The last thing I sing in English is "you've planted all your everlasting hatred in my heart". I then wander off round the world searching for different kinds of meaning - whether its avant guard, or revolution, or serialist fantasy, or religion, or all those things. Pretentious or what?! Well I don't care anymore."

Before you reach that final segment (the inverse of the traditional Comic Opera light and uplifting ending), this feels like it could even be Robert Wyatt's 'pop' album. He's openly a fan of 'tunes', and the deep influence of songs such as 'Raining in My Heart', covered on his last record, has perhaps had an impact on the melodies and compressed structures of these new performances.

But the depth of the journey here, from start to finish, is magnificent, and stopping off along the way for the sublime steel pan and sax battle of 'On the Town Square'; or for the frantic song of bomber versus bombed, featuring Brian Eno's sampled voice replayed by Wyatt on synthesizer, 'Out of the Blue', seems only to be expected in an album as enjoyable and ambitious as this.

"Greeks divided things into Comedy and Tragedy, and Comedy didn't mean funny, it meant just, 'about human foibles', as opposed to tragedy which is about Gods and Destiny. So this is about human foibles. I want to emphasise that because I do end up singing a kind of hymn to Che Guevarra, but I'm talking about human foibles, I'm not looking for new Gods."

There are some of Wyatt's best songs here, seemingly tossed off with ease. There are love songs of sorts, but love songs of tolerance as much as simple delight. 'Just As You Are', for example, is further from the sentimentality of the Billy Joel/Barry White classic, than should be possible with such familiar linguistic terrain. It is about living with someone else. The emphasis here is on realism; on the gaps and distance as much as the closeness, between lovers. The song crops up later in 'Fragment', in what sounds like reversed, compressed form, an anarchic and crude remix - either undermining the beauty of its original version, or emphasising, via cut up repetition, the implicit contentedness versus resignation of the lines "I'm never going to change a thing about you". Songs like 'Just As You Are' and 'A Beautiful War', are, melodically so sweet, but they veer away from any safe 'pop' territory in the tension between mellifluous beauty and lyrical harshness. For others the juxtaposition is the other way around, but it is this tension, which is central to Comicopera's mastery.

"When I'm writing I write completely on automatic - actually a better word is composing, meaning putting together, because I didn't write the first song or the last one - so when I'm putting together a record I do it completely instinctively, like an animal hunting for food or whatever. And only once I've done it do i work out what I was up to. I don't think beforehand, I think afterwards. I find that plans ahead, concepts ahead limit you."

Whether or not the concepts that help elevate this record above a mere loose collection of songs came before or after, it is clear that the editing process, the composition here, and the songwriting itself, is quite astounding. There is so much to find, and to return to, in the generous 'company' of this record.

Alexis Taylor

Hot Chip

Biography by John Dougan:

An enduring figure who came to prominence in the early days of the English art rock scene, Robert Wyatt has produced a significant body of work, both as the original drummer for art rockers Soft Machine and as a radical political singer/songwriter.

Born in Bristol, England, Wyatt came to Soft Machine during the exciting, slightly post-psychedelic Canterbury Scene of the mid-'60s that produced bands like Gong and Pink Floyd. Unlike many of the art rock bands that would come later (Jethro Tull, Yes, King Crimson), Soft Machine eschewed bloated theatrical excess, preferring a standard rock format that interpolated jazz riffing, extended soloing, and some forays into experimental noise. Wyatt, then Soft Machine's drummer, left the band during its initial wave of popularity. His solo career was built less around his abilities as a percussionist and more around his frail tenor voice, capable of breaking hearts with its falsetto range.

It was not long after his first solo release, End of an Ear, that Wyatt fell from an open window during a party, fracturing his back and permanently paralyzing him from the waist down. After months of painful recuperation, Wyatt re-emerged with the harrowing Rock Bottom (1974) and the bizarre Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard (1975), the former dealing explicitly with his post-accident life, the latter a series of surreal fables. And while the music on these records is trance-like and experimental, Wyatt shockingly recorded a straight version of the Monkees' "I'm a Believer" in 1974 that became a big British hit. Controversy ensued when the BBC's long-running weekly pop music program Top of the Pops refused to allow Wyatt to perform the song in his wheelchair. After a significant protest played out in the music trade papers, Wyatt did perform.

Despite his success, Wyatt remained quiet for much of the rest of the decade, breaking his silence during the punk era with a handful of singles recorded for the great English indie label Rough Trade. Again, going against audience expectations, he recorded a beautiful version of Chic's "At Last I Am Free." This signaled the start of a full-fledged career renaissance that included numerous albums and artists such as Elvis Costello writing songs for him. His albums were lush, at times almost meditative, and Wyatt's voice -- clear, emotionally charged, and always on the verge of breaking -- brought great depth and soul to songs that, if recorded by a lesser artist, would have sounded terse and tired.

Always on the political left, Wyatt's radicalism increased exponentially during Margaret Thatcher's years as Prime Minister, as he maintained an unwavering support for Communism even as glasnost was nigh. The resulting music he recorded during this period reflects his strong, bordering on strident, political beliefs. As of the mid-2000s, Wyatt has comfortably worked in and out of the music business. He records when he feels like it, paints, writes, devotes time to political work, and continues to show no interest in the machinations of the music industry. But, despite his occasionally strident political posture, he has recorded some stunning music, full of wonder, possibility, and pure emotion, that remains undiscovered by many.

Original News:

Guardian UK: Wyatting (vb): when jukeboxes go mad

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