REVIEWS
Blogfoolk magazine. February 2025
https://www.blogfoolk.com/2025/02/paul-james-au-coin-perdu-autoproduzione.html?m=1&sfnsn=scwspmo
It is a trunk full of precious things, making Paul James' new album almost a treasure chest. In it, the English multi-instrumentalist has placed a series of objects and musical treasures, which he has collected in a decades-long (and still ongoing) journey through European and non-European music: sounds, echoes, fragments, or entire compositions, which James has juxtaposed and assembled with rare mastery, creating ten tracks of great beauty. With ‘Au Coin Perdu’, Paul James confirms the characteristic and distinctive traits of his music, which can be found both in the productions with the groups of which he was and is a fundamental component, first and foremost Blowzabella, and in his solo or reduced-format works (such as the excellent ‘Horse’, with Mark Hawkins, released in 2004 on the Piedmontese label Ethnosuoni): a borderline music, where this definition is to be understood more from a geographical-cultural point of view than from a genre point of view. It is also for this reason that it does not appear to be a coincidence that the album's cover photo and title, which in Italian means ‘at the lost corner’, are those of a service station located in Belgium, near Dranouter, along a road through which one passes into France. In ‘Au Coin Perdu’ Paul James plays saxophones, bagpipes, tin whistle, piano, keyboards, synthesisers, electric guitar and percussion. Each track features a guest, whose style and instrumentation colours the piece differently. Thus the title track is for half of its development a dance with French-Piedmontese tones, thanks to Gregory Jolivet's hurdy-gurdy; Carlos Beceiro's bouzouki and guitar give an Iberian/Galician flavour to ‘Paraugas’; ‘One for sorrow' has a dreamlike character, with James's sax and Enrico Negro's guitars in dialogue with each other; “Falco for two” is a piece with medieval echoes, in which the bagpipes of James and Rick Krüger favour tunefulness over virtuosity. And again: ‘Seraphine’ is like a love song performed on the border between night and dawn, with the sound of the bagpipes unravelled against the background of Milena Hoge's harp, while in ‘The piano in the parlour’, James's sax and Rosalie Bosteels's piano follow minimalist patterns as they move through an empty musical space, at the centre of which is a metronome. With the following ‘The Black Mill And The Three Priests’ we return to a dance theme, which this time, however, harks back to the south of France and northern Italy, thanks to Bruno Le Tron's accordion. Bright and lively is then ‘More Horizonto’, in which again James's sax and Hoge's harp duet. All the pieces are original compositions, with the exception of ‘Ach Tjanne’, a traditional to which Paul James has added a part that, with the contribution of Tine Dael on bass, brings the piece closer to jazz and prog. In similar and, if anything, even more rarefied musical territories, the closing track also moves, the evocative ‘Watching the planets’, written and performed together with Victor Nicholls, who here plays electric guitar and bass. For listeners more accustomed to a multicultural dimension, approaching this album is just like opening a trunk full of things, finding pieces of one's musical memory. Some of these pieces it was quite clear, we would say obvious, that they were there, while others one might not even remember the existence of; all of them, however, appear well preserved, with no traces of dust or oxidation. In ‘Au Coin Perdu’ they are arranged in a different order, captivating and sometimes surprising, and tell a new story, in which, however, one still recognises the individual components, those that have formed the musical taste of each of us.
Marco G. La Viola
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https://ildiapasonblog.wordpress.com/2025/01/08/paul-james-au-coin-perdu/
Paul James: and how can I forget the sonic impact and the freshness of the music in their concert in Verona on that very distant 11 May 1989 - it was the tour of the sumptuous ‘A Richer Dust’, if I'm not mistaken -, is ‘also’ a member of Blowzabella, an English group that, starting from traditional music and instrumentation, was able to invent a language that mixed tradition and modernity (i.e. new writing) with arrangements that, especially live, made an impact on listeners who had often never heard this English group before. Now Paul James releases this second solo album of his, ‘Au Coin Perdu’, where he still carries on that sonic project in an altogether excellent way, thanks also to his being a ‘multi-instrumentalist’. - here he plays saxophones, bagpipes, tin whistle, piano, keyboards, guitar and percussion -, ten duets, but with a definite but not invasive presence of electronic sounds - with musicians from the most diverse areas, ten different atmospheres that manage to maintain a certain homogeneity in the work and to arouse curiosity as one proceeds in the listening, which is not easy as we know. The tracks are originals except for a beautiful reworking of ‘Ach Tjanne’ whose melody, here expounded by the bagpipes and then by the saxophone, is that of a Flemish ballad about famine, death and misery and is performed together with the Belgian double bass player Tine Dael, one of the most significant tracks not only because of its absolutely up-to-date arrangement but because Paul James has added a new part to the original, creating a perfect symbiosis between ancient and modern. I would also like to mention a couple of tracks that are significant to me, the eponymous one - a beautiful dance theme - with the hurdy-gurdy by the Frenchman Gregory Jolivet and ‘One for Sorrow’ performed in tandem with the guitarist Enrico Negro who duets with the sax, also here a traditional ‘apocryphal’ with a remarkable arrangement designed for the dobro that almost imitates the sound of a harp.
A truly interesting disc for those who have followed Blowzabella's path, but also, and above all, for the curious who seek new paths originating in traditional music.
Alessandro Nobis
