Michael Brook – Cobalt Blue / Live At The Aquarium

4AD

Michael Brook’s expressive guitar style is a sensory wonder, full of kaleidoscopic fervour and layered ambience. An arched back of hazy sustains, overshot and interwoven with a sterling grasp of rhythm and riffological hookery.

A world away from the rather subdued atmospheres of his work on Sleeps With The Fishes back in the late eighties with Clan Of Xymox’s Pieter Nooten, Cobalt Blue is imbued with a powerful sense of groove, tangling up the listener in a multitude of influences and flavours.

An overly summery disposition that informs the dusky detectability of “Shona Bridge” or the juddery loose change of “Breakdown” (a personal fav), sparkling in a bluesy / Hawaïian-like champagne of fret-skipping optimism. The instrumental energy of these compositions is off the scale. Instinctively light and airy, their complexity playful, imaginative; everything vibrantly falls into place, spiralling plenty of intriguing pyrotechnics in the process.

That bluegrass-like snake-hipped echo of tapering guitar on the hiccupping glitch of “Lakbossa” giving out a rootsy blast of authenticity, vaporously tailfinning a peacock-feathered surprise of quick-fingered frets. Fluid theatrics that mirage-hex “Ultramarine” or the infinitely mirrored “Ten” staining like a spilt Merlot on the white tablecloth of your consciousness, all loose-lipped lazuli and chordic-driven free flow.

This bewitching brew binds pervasively… has you attentive to its constantly mutating narrative. The ricocheting light of “Red Shift” see-sawing in a constant soup of fret re-routing; the minaretted groove of “Skip Wave” Bedouining belief in its crafted details — a potent forerunner maybe to his later work with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

What an absolute joy it’s been revisit this album, its chilled nature fitting perfectly with the roasting temperatures of its July re-release date. What’s more, this being a retrospective celebration of Michael Brook’s achievements for 4AD, the label have kindly tagged on a promotional live show for good measure (which back in the day was super-hard to find — especially if you lived outside the capital – then grew super-expensive to purchase in the interim).

Wowwww!!! what a rarefied nugget of enjoyability Live At The Aquarium is too, something I dare to say sounds even better than what preceded it (how is this possible? – well it is…). A live document that has Brook nimbly turning “Shona Bridge” into a rocked-out thing of beauty, reshaping “Lakbossa” into some wah-withered dynamite, its skim-stone flicker almost unrecognisable from its studio cousin.

The dexterity of this performance is epic, itchy with improvised energy and performative shunt. A total pleasure, ending on the mutating high of “Red Shift”. If you’ve not heard Michael Brook before, I’d get to it… he doesn’t disappoint.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-