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Another Fine Day: Salvage

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s

Artist: Another Fine Day
Title: Salvage
Released: 2000.08.22
Label: Six Degrees Records
Time: 53:18
Producer(s): Tom Green
Appears with:
Category: Jazz
Rating: *******... (7/10)
Media type: CD
Purchase date:  2002.07.08
Price in €: 7,00
Web address: www.anotherfineday.co.uk

 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Scarborough Fair (Traditional) - 5:45
[2] Twisted Standards (T.Green) - 5:53
[3] Cutting Branches (Traditional) - 7:19
[4] Lost in Space (T.Green) - 4:50
[5] Two Kalimbas and a Synth (T.Green) - 4:02
[6] Urban Fox (T.Green) - 5:01
[7] In 5 (T.Green) - 6:35
[8] Irish in China (T.Green/P.Sax) - 5:43
[9] Malcoom's Loop (M.Darwen/T.Green) - 8:10

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


TOM GREEN - Synthesizer, Percussion, Piano, Accordion, Arranger, Kalimba, Producer, Photography, Sanza

PAUL SAX - Fiddle on [1,8]
MALCOLM DARWEEN - Endless Guitar Loop on [9]
WENDY DONLEAVY - Mbira on [3]
DEBBY KORFMACHER - Mbira on [3]
ANJA OED - Mbira on [3]
KATARINA LOBECK - Fula Flute on [1]
MATT ZEG - Mutated Sitars on [4]
TOM SIMENAUER - Recycled Tablas on [6,7]

TIM DENNEN - Mastering
MICHAEL SNYDER - Art Direction, Design

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s


2000 CD CLIMATE 3004



About the Album:
If things had gone according to plan, you wouldn't have the chance to hear the new record by Another Fine Day. "AFD was intended to be a one-off," says Tom Green, the one man in this one-man band. AFD's 1994 record Life Before Land was simply an experiment, an attempt to create a gentle melodic style of ambient music "for post-club chilling." Rather, Green found himself with an instant ambient classic. He soon learned that, as he puts it, "AFD would not be allowed to die quietly." Various festivals and record labels continuously asked for more material and live performances, and AFD tracks were repeatedly used in many compilation CDs. Now, and finally, Green has responded with Another Fine Day's sophomore effort, Salvage.


Bio:
The new album draws on English folk songs, southeast African music, acid jazz, and Eno-esque electronic landscapes, without ever settling squarely on any one of them. This is hardly surprising, given the diversity of Tom Green's career. He spent years working as a writer, musician, and producer with such diverse acts as The Orb and the world music band Baka Beyond; his remixes include songs by alternative rockers Primitive Radio Gods and Irish folk legend Donal Lunny.

AFD's signature sound, despite the imaginative use of electronic processing and computer software, is defined by the ancient African instrument known in English as the thumb piano. Called mbira in Zimbabwe, sanza in Cameroon, and kalimba in Uganda (among other names), this simple set of metal tongues on it's wooden body is considered sacred in some parts of Africa. In putting together Salvage, Tom Green resolved to treat the instrument with respect. "I was determined not to produce a white-boy-plays-traditional-African-music album," he explains, "or a new age tinkles album, or yet another big beats world dance album (this time with thumb pianos)." Instead, he took the term "world music" literally, treating the thumb piano as an instrument as appropriate to Celtic or Western dance music as it is to the Shona rituals of Zimbabwe.

Fittingly, this decidedly modern album starts with an ancient English song. "Scarborough Fair" begins with a violin playing the familiar melody, then comes a sudden rush of kalimbas and what seems to be a whole carnival of drums, but the melody continues unruffled and unhurried. Very subtle touches of synthesizer and the almost classical-sounding violin and piano make this the first genuinely new arrangement of "Scarborough Fair" since Simon & Garfunkel returned from London with their memorable version some thirty years ago.

As if to claim as much musical territory as possible, Another Fine Day immediately follows with "Twisted Standards," an excursion into the world of trip hop and acid jazz. The jazzy piano and organ play melodic fragments that almost sound familiar, layers of thumb piano swirl around drums and electronic sounds, and suddenly the question of "what would happen if Dollar Brand met Portishead?" (just in case anyone was wondering) has been answered.

The rest of Salvage is similarly eclectic, yet accessible. "Cutting Branches" presents a riot of instrumental colors, many of them apparently acoustic but in reality produced electronically, in a version of a traditional piece of Shona mbira music. "Lost in Space" is a tribute to the Harold Budd/Brian Eno sound of the early 1980's; and "In 5" is an Arabic-flavored brew of odd meters, throbbing bass, mystical ney flutes, and relentless Arab and Indian drums. Meanwhile, the kalimbas come and go, sounding like a patter of rain on one track ("Two Kalimbas And A Synth"), or serving as a lead melodic instrument over a bed of overlapping and interlocking rhythms on another (tellingly entitled "Irish In China").

If it's hard to say what Salvage is, it's easy to say what it's not. Tom Green admits to being "disenchanted with the whole world-music-with-beats scene," and recalls that it was his "dissatisfaction with most white pop music of the 80's" that led him to start working with African artists based in London. So while his collaborations with Baka Beyond, The Orb, Hyperborea, and others may have taken him into both the world music and pop music scenes, Green points out that Another Fine Day is neither. "I tried to avoid anything that could be easily categorized as one type of music rather than another," he explains. Under the influence of avant-garde American composers Steve Reich and John Cage, Green began exploring "found sounds" and experimental sonic processes. "Salvage is so named because many of the tracks started life completely different from the way they now sound," he says, "being effectively 'new' tracks salvaged from old ones that I decided were just too weird, experimental, plain, and crazy for their own good."

While he continues to be a part of what he calls "the Orb planetary system," Green has pursued many other musical projects. He's written music for two projects for RTE Television in Ireland, and will be performing as Another Fine Day at this year's Big Chill Festival and later in Greece as well. In the six years since its almost inadvertent beginning, Another Fine Day has become much more than a "one-off." Tom Green's experiment with "accessible, rhythmic, tuneful, and surprising" music has carved a place for itself in a music scene of almost bewildering diversity. Salvage marks it as a place worth visiting.
 


The main components of Another Fine Day's second album, Salvage, are minimalist ambient techno and the African kalimba, but producer/instrumentalist Tom Green isn't afraid to spice up the mix with other elements as well: jazz, folk, funk, modern classical, and trance (the electronic-dance variety), for example. Green isn't the first to fuse electronic and world music, but he is one of the more eclectic and unpredictable of the bunch — sometimes to the point where the album can bog down in experimental meandering. But the many interesting moments justify the occasional half-formed idea.

Steve Huey, All-Music Guide, © 1992 - 2002 AEC One Stop Group, Inc.



Salvage lives up to its title in many ways, since it sounds like a hodgepodge of ideas, sketches, and influences that producer and composer Tom Green has salvaged into an album. The second effort from Green, Salvage dials into an African-techno sound pioneered most recently by Afro Celt Sound System. Using the African kalimba or thumb piano as the basis for many pieces, Green sets up hypnotic, slo-mo tribal grooves. His work with both the Orb and Baka Beyond emerges, as well as the seminal influence of Brian Eno and Harold Budd. He borrows their ambient atmospheres on "Lost in Space" and brings jazz piano stylings to a funky groove called "Twisted Standards." Green creates some curious juxtapositions, like inserting the familiar "Scarborough Faire" into a trance groove on the opening track and making a traditional Shona piece sound like the Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Unfortunately, a lot of Salvage sounds like backgrounds looking for a theme, a pleasant assemblage of sonic bric-a-brac, with a destination that's diffuse.

John Diliberto, Amazon.com



If things had gone according to plan, you wouldn't have the chance to hear the new record by Another Fine Day.  "AFD was intended to be a one-off," says Tom Green, the one man in this one-man band.  AFD's 1994 record Life Before Land was simply an experiment, an attempt to create a gentle melodic style of ambient music "for post-club chilling."  Rather, Green found himself with an instant ambient classic.  He soonl earned that, as he puts it, "AFD would not be allowed to die quietly."  Various festivals and record labels continuously asked for more material and live performances, and AFD tracks were repeatedly used in many compilation CDs.  Now, and finally, Green has responded with Another Fine Day's sophomore effort, Salvage.

The new album draws on English folk songs, southeast African music, acid jazz, and Eno-esque electronic landscapes, without ever settling squarely on any one of them.  This is hardly surprising, given the diversity of Tom Green's career.  He spent years working as a writer, musician, and producer with such diverse acts as The Orb and the world music band Baka Beyond; his remixes include songs by alternative rockers Primitive Radio Gods and Irish folk legend Donal Lunny.

AFD's signature sound, despite the imaginative use of electronic processing and computer software, is defined by the ancient African instrument known in English as the thumb piano.  Called mbira in Zimbabwe, sanza in Cameroon, and kalimba in Uganda (among other names), this simple set of metal tongues on it's wooden body is considered sacred in some parts of Africa. In putting together Salvage, Tom Green resolved to treat the instrument with respect.  "I was determined not to produce a white-boy-plays-traditional-African-music album," he explains, "or a new age tinkles album, or yet another big beats world dance album (this time with thumb pianos)." Instead, he took the term "world music" literally, treating the thumb piano as an instrument as appropriate to Celtic or Western dance music as it is to the Shona rituals of Zimbabwe.

Fittingly, this decidedly modern album starts with an ancient English song. "Scarborough Fair" begins with a violin playing the familiar melody, then comes a sudden rush of kalimbas and what seems to be a whole carnival of drums, but the melody continues unruffled and unhurried.  Very subtle touches of synthesizer and the almost classical-sounding violin and piano make this the first genuinely new arrangement of "Scarborough Fair" since Simon & Garfunkel returned from London with their memorable version some thirty years ago. 

As if to claim as much musical territory as possible, Another Fine Day immediately follows with "Twisted Standards," an excursion into the world of trip hop and acid jazz.  The jazzy piano and organ play melodic fragments that almost sound familiar, layers of thumb piano swirl around drums and electronic sounds, and suddenly the question of "what would happen if Dollar Brand met Portishead?" (just in case anyone was wondering) has been answered. 

The rest of Salvage is similarly eclectic, yet accessible. "Cutting Branches" presents a riot of instrumental colors, many of them apparently acoustic but in reality produced electronically, in a version of a traditional piece of Shona mbira music.  "Lost in Space" is a tribute to the Harold Budd/Brian Eno sound of the early 1980's; and "In 5" is an Arabic-flavored brew of odd meters, throbbing bass, mystical ney flutes, and relentless Arab and Indian drums.  Meanwhile, the kalimbas come and go, sounding like a patter of rain on one track ("Two Kalimbas And A Synth"), or serving as a lead melodic instrument over a bed of overlapping and interlocking rhythms on another (tellingly entitled "Irish In China").

If it's hard to say what Salvage is, it's easy to say what it's not.  Tom Green admits to being "disenchanted with the whole world-music-with-beats scene," and recalls that it was his "dissatisfaction with most white pop music of the 80's" that led him to start working with African artists based in London.  So while his collaborations with Baka Beyond, The Orb, Hyperborea, and others may have taken him into both the world music and pop music scenes, Green points out that Another Fine Day is neither.  "I tried to avoid anything that could be easily categorized as one type of music rather than another," he explains.  Under the influence of avant-garde American composers Steve Reich and John Cage, Green began exploring "found sounds" and experimental sonic processes.  "Salvage is so named because many of the tracks started life completely different from the way they now sound," he says, "being effectively 'new' tracks salvaged from old ones that I decided were just too weird, experimental, plain, and crazy for their own good."
While he continues to be a part of what he calls "the Orb planetary system," Green has pursued many other musical projects.  He's written music for two projects for RTE Television in Ireland, and will be performing as Another Fine Day at this year's Big Chill Festival and later in Greece as well.  In the six years since its almost inadvertent beginning, Another Fine Day has become much more than a "one-off." Tom Green's experiment with "accessible, rhythmic, tuneful, and surprising" music has carved a place for itself in a music scene of almost bewildering diversity. Salvage marks it as a place worth visiting.

Six Degrees Records



Another Fine Day is the pseudonym under which Tom Green creates his solo projects.  He has, as a writer and producer, collaborated with such diverse performers as The Orb and Baka Beyond.  "Salvage," his latest solo effort, recalls those collaborations and then some.

Tom blends ethnic (African thumb piano), traditional (violin) and electronic instruments to create a sound that is similar to Baka Beyond and Afro Celt Sound System and unique in its own right.  His jazzy overtones, tribal minimalism and experimental electronic sounds create the uniqueness.  The electronics are, for me, the threads that bind this enchanting CD to the ambient vision.

"Lost in Space" features a piano dirge surrounded by electronic and experimental effects and samples.  It is a great track of minimalist space music.  It is also NOT the highlight of the album!  That would have to be Tom's instrumental transcription of "Scarborough Fair."  His interpretation of that folk-rock classic is the lead track.  The ethnic and electronic treatment of the Simon and Garfunkel mainstay grabbed my attention and said, "Whoa, Dude!  Pay attention to this one!"  "Irish in China" stands out as an 'East meets West' delicacy.

All in all, "Salvage" has something for everyone.  Tom's virtuosity with the diverse styles and instruments makes this a winner, grabber and keeper!

Reviewed by Jim Brenholts

 L y r i c s


Currently no Lyrics available!

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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