Kevin Purdy - Kevin Purdy SOFT012
For his seventh solo album Kevin Purdy felt it was time to add his first name not just to the album title, but also his artist name. For the artist formerly known as Purdy this feels somehow momentous, not necessarily in the sense that he is maturing as an artist, more so that he may think his music is and he wants to stand behind it front and centre fully committed.
You can understand why. Whilst over the years and various albums his music has moved between lush cinematic pop, to minimal ambience, and more than a few other diverse at times quite experimental locations, on his self titled seventh album it feels like he has arrived at a place where he was always destined to be. I’d call it a folky psychedelic kind of pop, and you can hear everything from the Byrds, to John Cale via Nick Drake all filtered through his sounds, yet as always it feels very distinctively him. It has such a warm, sweet head nodding feel. It’s a gentle warm embrace of an album. In fact during the opener ‘home away from home he practically declares it “I can’t wait to see me hold you, I can’t wait to feel you in my arms in my arms in my arms.”
The gestation of this album took some time, and he’s been working on these tunes on and off more or less since 2011. A multi instrumentalist, Purdy plays bass, electric and acoustic guitars, lap steel, keyboards, drums, percussion, harmonica, and glockenspiel as well as offering vocals. That said he’s also enlisted some help across a smattering of individual songs from some pretty heavy hitters such as fellow Sydneysiders Bobby Singh (tabla), Peter Hollo (cello), Amanda Stewart (vocals) and his cohort from his Geoff Kevin project, Geoff Towner (bass) and a few others.
Often there’s a really sweet summery feel to Purdy’s music, though occasionally there’s some darkness at the edges, or at the very least weirdness, such as ‘Sunlight Loves you’, where Penny Mcbride’s trumpet feels like a single sliver of sunlight on an otherwise dull overcast day. Perhaps it’s some kind of warning. He heads into more krautrock territory on ‘Rooms Full of Elephants’ with driving metronomic drums and all manner of strange sounds submerged in the mix. And he ends with another instrumental piece, a slow rock and roll stomp, with electric guitar, keys, and Paula Henderson’s deep textural baritone sax tearing things up. It feels a world away from the open folksy embrace of ‘home away from home’, yet it still feels playful, and weird, albeit with a darker edge. Ultimately though it all feels distinctively like Purdy, who’s seventh album is such a lovingly crafted psychedelic pop opus that it definitely deserves a Kevin in front of it.
Bob Baker Fish - Cyclic Defrost - July 2024
If it is in some sense the exception that proves the rule, the track Rooms Full Of Elephants – a slowly spiralling drone meeting a dark highway cruiser on an album which leans decidedly pop – also serves as a confirmation of the overall tenor of this album.
No longer operating only as Purdy and now offering his full name as album title to boot – could we say he’s climbing that stairway to Kevin? Hmm, maybe not. Sorry. – the multi-instrumentalist songwriter has pulled together tracks from a decade or so for this project. If this suggests the possibility of a patchwork collection, that would be wrong.
Across its near eight minutes, Rooms… takes psychedelia in hand, shifting perspective both within and without: from barely awake contemplation and the weight of something foretold, to insistent propulsion and tangible tension, so that listening evokes a physical more than a thinking response.
In the track after it, Oceans In Time, Kevin Purdy uses that drone sense but now as something that feels like a surf song written by someone who lives on a lake: vaguely tropical, slightly dreamy and modulating rather than cascading, even as it begins to crash in its last minute. In the track before it, Sunlight Loves You, he slowly introduces tension into an exceedingly pretty base of guitar, tambourine and low key trumpet: the tension is not at all sufficient, or intended, to displace the gentle flow but it encroaches at the edges, like the beginning of shadow.
All three tracks are, to borrow from the title of an earlier song, elusive trails. They present as one thing, hint at more, then don’t actually resolve, except as part of a longer story. The effect is just trippy enough to alter the state of listening. And this is not uncommon.
The album opens with the low-temperature, wheezy, murmured fare of Home Away From Home, which keeps its shape hazy even as it can’t help but throw golden pop moments at you that shine through that haze. The Long Shot, a loping, slightly out of focus song that suggests Syd Barrett as a country music fan, is deceptively attractive, and not so deceptively bent just enough, and serves as a bridge to Elusive Trails, which hints at North Africa and Canterbury, offers a jaunty direction and then fades away.
But before you can decide if you or Purdy has lost the point, we are at Sunlight Loves You and the next wave begins. It isn’t disorienting; it says all directions are acceptable.
This means that by the time you reach the closing Count Sand, it somehow feels appropriate that its intersection of inner city stomp and downtown saxophone blurs more lines, this time between art rock and a kind of post-punk jazz. You can see the outline of the buildings Purdy has built but not the façades; those you have to imagine yourself. It’s properly psychedelic.
Bernard Zuel - bernardzuel.net
While he calls in nine pretty prestigious Sydney-based musical friends to add a voice here, a cello there on the odd track, FourPlay’s cellist Peter Hollo, Machine For Making Sense’s Amanda Stewart and table player to the stars Bobby Singh among them, this eponymous album from multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer Kevin Purdy is pretty much a solo album, embroidered from the subtlest of guitar parts, acoustic and electric, bass, lap steel, keyboards, drums, percussion and all manner of tinkling, shimmering combinations of all of the above in a remarkable yet understated sonic tapestry across the album’s seven tunes. Penny McBride contributes some particularly affecting trumpet lines to ‘Sunlight Loves You’, while Hollo’s haunting opening cello drones counterpoint Purdy’s churning guitar and appropriately atmospheric sounds as we’re taken through the tribal instrumental ‘Rooms Full of Elephants’, a perfect soundscape for a safari, just as the other instrumental, ‘Elusive Trails’ lifts up and out into the gentlest of breeze, underpinned by Singh’s silky tabla. ‘Oceans in Time’ picks up the tempo as Purdy runs us through lists of seemingly disconnected words and phrases before we’re washed into a swirling chorus of questions. Paula Henderson’s layers of baritone sax launch us into the third and closing instrumental, ‘Count Sand’, a fittingly quixotic outro, its end the cue to press “replay”.
Michael George Smith
Geoff Kevin - Avoidance SOFT011
Geoff Kevin
Avoidance
Soft CD/DL/LP
Kevin Purdy has been running his Soft Records label since 2000. His Output
Has always been refreshing, inviting and immersive, drawing the dots between
Canterbury sound, the melodic new wave of The feelies, Tuxedomoon, Dislocation Dance, et al, and loping of early Ninja Tune. The mixes Purdy uploads to his Next Up Mixcloud account demonstrate the full breadth of his listening.
Geoff Kevin is Purdy’s collaboration with fellow Sydney singer/Songwriter Geoff Towner. Their debut release Avoidance sees Purdy in the producer role. He bathes Towner’s lyrics and vocals in a surround-sound ambience of layered guitars and atmospherics without straying from each song’s focus, purpose and statement. Multi-instrumentalist Purdy provides plenty of laconic guitar licks, 12-string jangling, canyon drums and laid-back bass strolling. Glockenspiel is handled by him and Towner, who also strums multiple guitars. The tracks often skirt the baroque, usually to lean back into a casual register. There’s a lot of space in the songs, making the record a low-key listening luxury.
Towner’s vocals shift from quiet jubilance (“Parallel Universe”) to soft wailing (“Sense of the Storm”). “Parallel Universe” sports some watery guitar, muted trumpet and great sighing harmonies; the track dubs down to a Beatles-flavoured conclusion. The mid-section of “Sense of the Storm” devolves into Frippish envelopes of clean distortion. There’s always something modulating anything the ear catches.
Instrumentals “Rejigger the Lot” and “Faery dance” recall the darkly colourful yet bleached tonalities of Purdy’s superb solo releases like In Transit (2017). He might not be as breakneck prolific as most avant Bandcampers are these days, but maybe he’s not in such a hurry, and whatever he does is always worth the wait.
Philip Brophy - THE WIRE Oct 2021
Avoidance
Soft CD/DL/LP
Kevin Purdy has been running his Soft Records label since 2000. His Output
Has always been refreshing, inviting and immersive, drawing the dots between
Canterbury sound, the melodic new wave of The feelies, Tuxedomoon, Dislocation Dance, et al, and loping of early Ninja Tune. The mixes Purdy uploads to his Next Up Mixcloud account demonstrate the full breadth of his listening.
Geoff Kevin is Purdy’s collaboration with fellow Sydney singer/Songwriter Geoff Towner. Their debut release Avoidance sees Purdy in the producer role. He bathes Towner’s lyrics and vocals in a surround-sound ambience of layered guitars and atmospherics without straying from each song’s focus, purpose and statement. Multi-instrumentalist Purdy provides plenty of laconic guitar licks, 12-string jangling, canyon drums and laid-back bass strolling. Glockenspiel is handled by him and Towner, who also strums multiple guitars. The tracks often skirt the baroque, usually to lean back into a casual register. There’s a lot of space in the songs, making the record a low-key listening luxury.
Towner’s vocals shift from quiet jubilance (“Parallel Universe”) to soft wailing (“Sense of the Storm”). “Parallel Universe” sports some watery guitar, muted trumpet and great sighing harmonies; the track dubs down to a Beatles-flavoured conclusion. The mid-section of “Sense of the Storm” devolves into Frippish envelopes of clean distortion. There’s always something modulating anything the ear catches.
Instrumentals “Rejigger the Lot” and “Faery dance” recall the darkly colourful yet bleached tonalities of Purdy’s superb solo releases like In Transit (2017). He might not be as breakneck prolific as most avant Bandcampers are these days, but maybe he’s not in such a hurry, and whatever he does is always worth the wait.
Philip Brophy - THE WIRE Oct 2021
Geoff Kevin: “A night time record.”
Aside from sounding like the creepy guy with two first names that your mum told you to avoid, Geoff Kevin are a Sydney based duo who make delightfully skewed suburban psychedelic pop that seems to draw upon a rich tapestry of musical influences yet remains resolutely individual. They’ve just released their debut album Avoidance on Soft Records, and it’s a widescreen folk pop opus drawing on elements of everything from 60’s pop, to psychedelic folk and numerous other times and places in between. It sounds pretty damn Australian too. Confused? You wont be when you hear the music, which is melodic, catchy, soulful and bewilderingly beautiful – when it isn’t being odd. It’s the work of multi instrumentalist and Sydney institution Kevin Purdy (Tooth) and vocalist and composer Geoff Towner (El Mopa/ Decoder Ring).
“It’s us grabbing whatever turns us on musically and running with bits of ideas, not stopping to worry,” reveals Purdy via email. “We’re both very instinctive artists and if it makes us happy it’s good. At the end of the day I can’t think of one album I own that, as a whole, that sounds like this one.”
With melancholic heartfelt vocals over some really curious unexpected at times quite elongated music, you can hear everything from Robert Wyatt to Can, to Neil Young in country rock mode or the Canterbury sound, but there’s also something distinctively Australian, distinctively suburban. It’s this combination of influences and experiences that makes it so fascinating and difficult to place. It keeps you coming back.
“I very much like the terms “suburban psychedelia” and “folk for the suburbs”! A lot!!!” Suggests Towner, also via email from Sydney when I offer this take. “I can’t speak for Kevin, but I am as influenced by local music as I am by international music. And we both like a LOT of different styles from a lot of different eras!”
“I see it as a combination of a lot of the things we love,” offers Purdy. “We could share some things inspirational motivations like Jimi Hendrix or Neil Young, David Axelrod or Morricone, but when it comes to the end result it’s shaped by our lives, growing up in Australia, yeah, folk music from the suburbs, from the bush, from the band room out the back of the pub, it’s very much Geoff and Kevin. Guitar wise I’ve been playing my take on Gilmore, Daevid Allen and Fripp for a while now, but I don’t think it’s an imitation it’s inspiration. I think that even though there’s mellotrons and other 60’s sounds there, there’s also Television, Patti Smith, Bowie..”
To some extent they both knew what they were getting into thanks to Purdy’s extensive solo recordings and Towner’s celebrated post rock excursions in Decoder Ring, El Mopa and his own solo work.
“I’ve been well acquainted with Purdy’s production skills for many years (especially the amazing Fairytale Insurance),” offers Towner, “so I was expecting, and hoping for, a “wide screen” sound. But I had no idea about how the exact genesis of one song idea (or sketch) to the end result would eventuate… with some of the songs anyway.
“I had a strong feeling of trust in whatever he would come up with,” reveals Purdy. “My feelings ended up being spot on, as he revealed to me what he’d been working on. The lyrics and the vocal ideas were so strong and so right, I was blown away. Also, I had no idea of what a wiz he was with string and brass arrangements, especially with the two instrumentals, which we created from scratch. I know, basically, my style of production and had an idea of how things might turn out but Geoff’s ideas took the album to a completely other level.”
When they first began working together in 2018, after knowing each other for decades they both had an abundance of material in their back pockets. In fact they were spoiled for choice. Purdy had more than an album of material that he’d intended to work with on with the band that recorded his sunny 2010 album Deviant Nature and had since shelved when the band members went their separate ways. Towner meanwhile, at least in Purdy’s estimation had about three albums worth of music.
Out of this abundance of choice they selected 6 songs, 3 from each.
“With Purdy’s songs (which he had been working on a while before we hooked up), 2 of them he had done vocal tracks for, and he had a vocal melody for the third,” Towner remembers. “I ended up writing completely new lyrics for his songs but stuck to his vocal melodies and tried to keep to the general tone of his original lyric ideas. The other 3 songs were all my own lyrics & melodies. This is the first time I sat down, from 9 to 5, and WROTE for a song. Sometimes for a few days! Usually I’d just whack them out in an hour or two! I really tried to concentrate on complex rhyming structures and themes, with multiple themes and patterns occurring in the one song. It was hard work!”
It’s not just that the vocals are such a strong feature on the album, it’s that they’re so diverse, so playful, so joyfully experimental, melodic and catchy, echoing the music, which is also brimming with an abundance of ideas. Whilst Purdy is predominantly known for his instrumental and electronic work he willingly admits to an earlier life where he sang in bands before diverting into more electronic and instrumental work the late 90’s. He also confesses to still harboring some degree of suspicion about vocal based music.
“I’ve had a problem with songs for most of my life,” he offers, “in that singing and lyrics can take up too much attention and ruin a tune if it’s not interesting, but with Geoff I was safe there. I knew it would be cool.” For Towner it all begins with the music, and once that structure is nailed down only then will he begin the lyrics. But what exactly is he singing about?
“I guess I tend to write deeply personal lyrics, then try to tweak them so that they are relatable to the average listener. They often begin inspired by a real life situation and then mutate into something all their own. A song can often be about multiple subjects and storylines, but that reality can be hidden to the listener. Subjects on my mind for these songs were: love, death, anxiety, honesty, time and it’s passing, relationship decay, alternate dimensions, cults, class distinction, getting older, stagnation and vampires.”
“One thing I learned from my time in El Mopa was little things that Simon Wooldridge would do in his songwriting, like adding a snippet of a known song into one of his own, like a line or two or a riff. It wasn’t intended as a “rip off” but as a wink of the eye to the listener… “did you catch that?”… and could often change the original intention or meaning of the song being referenced. I found that extremely inspirational and have constantly done that ever since. There are lyrical “winks of the eye” in this batch of songs to Thin Lizzy, Something For Kate, This Mortal Coil, AC/DC, Johnny Cash, Will Oldham and Madonna.”
So about the name. Whilst Towner suggests that there have been so many famous duos who combine their surnames (Seals & Crofts, Godley & Creme, Loggins & Messina et al) that it seemed kind’ve funny to miss the point and do the opposite, Purdy’s inspiration came from a more concrete place.“I was watching an episode of Number 96 on DVD around the time we first started the project, and when the credits rolled I saw that the guy who played the adorable character Arnold Feather was Jeff Kevin. I thought it was a great name, if we changed the J for a G.”
Geoff Kevin never intended to be a band. To play live Towner muses that they’d probably need about 15 musicians and a bunch of rehearsal time. But both seemed to have really enjoyed the experience, speaking of the chemistry they enjoyed and egoless collaborative experience. To both it seems inevitable that they’ll record again together. Just don’t hold your breath.“We are both quite active with our families and musically with our own stuff also,” offers Towner. “However this doesn’t mean it won’t happen again! I mean, I get about 10-30 song ideas a year, that probably end up as about 8-12 finished songs. Whether they seem to be Geoff Kevin songs is entirely up to the songs!”“I see “Avoidance” as a night time record.” He continues. “I would like at some stage to do a daytime record to match. It depends on the planets.”
“It’s us grabbing whatever turns us on musically and running with bits of ideas, not stopping to worry,” reveals Purdy via email. “We’re both very instinctive artists and if it makes us happy it’s good. At the end of the day I can’t think of one album I own that, as a whole, that sounds like this one.”
With melancholic heartfelt vocals over some really curious unexpected at times quite elongated music, you can hear everything from Robert Wyatt to Can, to Neil Young in country rock mode or the Canterbury sound, but there’s also something distinctively Australian, distinctively suburban. It’s this combination of influences and experiences that makes it so fascinating and difficult to place. It keeps you coming back.
“I very much like the terms “suburban psychedelia” and “folk for the suburbs”! A lot!!!” Suggests Towner, also via email from Sydney when I offer this take. “I can’t speak for Kevin, but I am as influenced by local music as I am by international music. And we both like a LOT of different styles from a lot of different eras!”
“I see it as a combination of a lot of the things we love,” offers Purdy. “We could share some things inspirational motivations like Jimi Hendrix or Neil Young, David Axelrod or Morricone, but when it comes to the end result it’s shaped by our lives, growing up in Australia, yeah, folk music from the suburbs, from the bush, from the band room out the back of the pub, it’s very much Geoff and Kevin. Guitar wise I’ve been playing my take on Gilmore, Daevid Allen and Fripp for a while now, but I don’t think it’s an imitation it’s inspiration. I think that even though there’s mellotrons and other 60’s sounds there, there’s also Television, Patti Smith, Bowie..”
To some extent they both knew what they were getting into thanks to Purdy’s extensive solo recordings and Towner’s celebrated post rock excursions in Decoder Ring, El Mopa and his own solo work.
“I’ve been well acquainted with Purdy’s production skills for many years (especially the amazing Fairytale Insurance),” offers Towner, “so I was expecting, and hoping for, a “wide screen” sound. But I had no idea about how the exact genesis of one song idea (or sketch) to the end result would eventuate… with some of the songs anyway.
“I had a strong feeling of trust in whatever he would come up with,” reveals Purdy. “My feelings ended up being spot on, as he revealed to me what he’d been working on. The lyrics and the vocal ideas were so strong and so right, I was blown away. Also, I had no idea of what a wiz he was with string and brass arrangements, especially with the two instrumentals, which we created from scratch. I know, basically, my style of production and had an idea of how things might turn out but Geoff’s ideas took the album to a completely other level.”
When they first began working together in 2018, after knowing each other for decades they both had an abundance of material in their back pockets. In fact they were spoiled for choice. Purdy had more than an album of material that he’d intended to work with on with the band that recorded his sunny 2010 album Deviant Nature and had since shelved when the band members went their separate ways. Towner meanwhile, at least in Purdy’s estimation had about three albums worth of music.
Out of this abundance of choice they selected 6 songs, 3 from each.
“With Purdy’s songs (which he had been working on a while before we hooked up), 2 of them he had done vocal tracks for, and he had a vocal melody for the third,” Towner remembers. “I ended up writing completely new lyrics for his songs but stuck to his vocal melodies and tried to keep to the general tone of his original lyric ideas. The other 3 songs were all my own lyrics & melodies. This is the first time I sat down, from 9 to 5, and WROTE for a song. Sometimes for a few days! Usually I’d just whack them out in an hour or two! I really tried to concentrate on complex rhyming structures and themes, with multiple themes and patterns occurring in the one song. It was hard work!”
It’s not just that the vocals are such a strong feature on the album, it’s that they’re so diverse, so playful, so joyfully experimental, melodic and catchy, echoing the music, which is also brimming with an abundance of ideas. Whilst Purdy is predominantly known for his instrumental and electronic work he willingly admits to an earlier life where he sang in bands before diverting into more electronic and instrumental work the late 90’s. He also confesses to still harboring some degree of suspicion about vocal based music.
“I’ve had a problem with songs for most of my life,” he offers, “in that singing and lyrics can take up too much attention and ruin a tune if it’s not interesting, but with Geoff I was safe there. I knew it would be cool.” For Towner it all begins with the music, and once that structure is nailed down only then will he begin the lyrics. But what exactly is he singing about?
“I guess I tend to write deeply personal lyrics, then try to tweak them so that they are relatable to the average listener. They often begin inspired by a real life situation and then mutate into something all their own. A song can often be about multiple subjects and storylines, but that reality can be hidden to the listener. Subjects on my mind for these songs were: love, death, anxiety, honesty, time and it’s passing, relationship decay, alternate dimensions, cults, class distinction, getting older, stagnation and vampires.”
“One thing I learned from my time in El Mopa was little things that Simon Wooldridge would do in his songwriting, like adding a snippet of a known song into one of his own, like a line or two or a riff. It wasn’t intended as a “rip off” but as a wink of the eye to the listener… “did you catch that?”… and could often change the original intention or meaning of the song being referenced. I found that extremely inspirational and have constantly done that ever since. There are lyrical “winks of the eye” in this batch of songs to Thin Lizzy, Something For Kate, This Mortal Coil, AC/DC, Johnny Cash, Will Oldham and Madonna.”
So about the name. Whilst Towner suggests that there have been so many famous duos who combine their surnames (Seals & Crofts, Godley & Creme, Loggins & Messina et al) that it seemed kind’ve funny to miss the point and do the opposite, Purdy’s inspiration came from a more concrete place.“I was watching an episode of Number 96 on DVD around the time we first started the project, and when the credits rolled I saw that the guy who played the adorable character Arnold Feather was Jeff Kevin. I thought it was a great name, if we changed the J for a G.”
Geoff Kevin never intended to be a band. To play live Towner muses that they’d probably need about 15 musicians and a bunch of rehearsal time. But both seemed to have really enjoyed the experience, speaking of the chemistry they enjoyed and egoless collaborative experience. To both it seems inevitable that they’ll record again together. Just don’t hold your breath.“We are both quite active with our families and musically with our own stuff also,” offers Towner. “However this doesn’t mean it won’t happen again! I mean, I get about 10-30 song ideas a year, that probably end up as about 8-12 finished songs. Whether they seem to be Geoff Kevin songs is entirely up to the songs!”“I see “Avoidance” as a night time record.” He continues. “I would like at some stage to do a daytime record to match. It depends on the planets.”
By Bob Baker Fish - Cyclic Defrost - October 21, 2021
Purdy - In Transit SOFT010
Over the last twenty years, multi-instrumentalist / producer Kevin Purdy has proven to be something of a Sydney music institution, with his musical endeavours both solo and as a member of the band Tooth reaching out into increasingly lush terrain coloured with hints of folk, post-rock and psychedelia. Three years on from his preceding ‘Body Variations’ collection, this seventh solo album from Purdy ‘In Transit’ sees his arrangements continuing to grow even more ambitious, taking in musical contributions from Jim Denley (sax, flute), Tangents’ Peter Hollo (cello), Simon Ferenci (trumpet) and Amanda Stewart (voice), to name just a few of the guest musicians that appear here.
Compared to Purdy’s preceding albums, the more overt electronics are noticeably pared back on these six tracks, which come across as easily some of the most warm and organically cinematic work he’s released to date. Above all, there’s a sense of warm and enveloping serenity being conjured here, with shards of light bleeding back in just as things start to enter more melancholic waters. It’s something aided in no small part by the exquisitely detailed production here, with opener ‘Set Adrift’ slowly leading the listener in as warm bluesy guitar strokes get delayed out against atmospheric cymbal sweeps and a wash of ambient field recordings, the resultant effect calling to mind hints of Americana as much as it does more UK folk-tinged psychedelia.
From there, ‘Garden Of Delight’ takes things down into more languid waters as slow cymbals and sparse percussion trace a path against effects treated guitar scrapes, only for majestic jazz horns to slowly unfurl like smoke into the foreground, the unhurried oceanic pace of the rhythms that murmur below allowing them plenty of space to stretch out over subtle bass runs. Elsewhere, ‘The View Below’ sees the sound of field recorded wild birds (which forms a recurrent motif here) ushering in wordless vocal harmonies, slow brushed drums and gentle horn melodies, the resultant cinematic crawl calling to mind hints of Morricone as eerie flickering textures gradually build up in the mix. It’s ‘The Five Dimensional Waltz’ that really forms the centrepiece of this album though, its twelve minute running length broken up into five mini-sections that build from ebbing ambient space blues into serene, prog-tinged country rock that suggests ‘Harvest’-era Neil Young taking a space walk out into the vast, yet curiously inviting void. A characteristically classy return from Purdy – this could easily be his most fully realised collection yet.
Chris Downton - Cyclic Defrost
I had never heard of Purdy until someone sent me a link to his Bandcamp on Twitter the other week, but I’m very glad they did. He’s an Australian multi-instrumentalist, who makes vibesy, blissed-out instrumental stuff that’s a bit Balearic, a bit prog, a bit post-rock, and 100% suitable for giving up your job and running away to spend your life off your chops wearing a kaftan and selling shell necklaces on the beach in Formentera to. His last album was a 45-minute single track epic, and this one has an 11-minute song called “The Five Dimensional Waltz” – I mean, what more could you want?
Joe Muggs - Big Fish, Little Fish
Taking a lazy approach to Kevin Purdy's new album, you could say that with a title like In Transit, a selection of essentially instrumental songs, an ambience usually more on the contemplative, or maybe ruminative, side than anything propulsive, this album could be well dropped in a kind of Eno-esque Music For Airports/On Land Category.
The thing is, it wouldn't be right but it wouldn't be wholly wrong either. Most of the time In Transit works in that space between foreground and background that characterises a lot of the artists on the ECM label, or some of the best moments of the Necks. You can fall back and let the music pass you by, especially in the self-explanatory opening track Set Adrift (which is just waiting for an invitation onto a surf movie soundtrack), and across parts of the five sections of The Five Dimensional Waltz. And certainly, set at medium volume the whole album can merge with the night quite attractively. But when the drums (played, as most instruments here are, by Purdy) ratchet up the drive in the second half of Tale of the Evolutionary Revolutionary , or the trumpet by Simon Ferenci, in The View Below, crosses over the glitchy sub-electronics like an all-terrain vehicle undeterred by gulch or hill, there's a ruggedness apparent.
Not that ruggedness is needed to move from ambience to prominence. When Jim Denley's saxophone rises and falls across the second track, Garden of Delight, or the guitar, with a nod to Dave Gilmour, sends out exploratory lines during the final stages of The Five Dimensional Waltz, there's an elegant movement.
Purdy's hardly new to this game and that experience is so obvious across the undulating shapes and attractive contours of In Transit.
Compositionally, he is a step above a lot of the toked-up/turned down instrumentalist albums. But as usual, there's also an adventurous spirit in these songs that won't settle for merely pleasant. He, unlike some of us, isn't up for the lazy option.
Bernard Zuel - bernardzuel.net
Known for his bewildering use of untraceable samples, Sydney producer Purdy has done a turnaround on his latest opus In Transit in choosing to forgo much of his sampling tricks and techniques for a more traditional band recording. However, there’s nothing so traditional about In Transit – this is supremely evocative, widescreen music with Purdy’s beautiful ear for arrangements working on a minor symphonic level. While circling around the orbit of late 60s and early 70s progressive rock with Purdy’s beloved strains of folk and psychedelia flowing through, the greatest thing Purdy has in his bulging trickbag is the fact that In Transit sounds very much like a record made for right here, right now.
Andrew Khedoori 2SER FM
Sydney
multi-instrumentalist Kevin Purdy explores his latest compositions
with some pretty impressive guest on this, his sixth album and first
on his own imprint. Saxophonist/flautist Jim Denley and vocalist
Amanda Stewart you’ll know best from their work together in
Machines For Making Sense, while cellist Peter Hollo first came to
prominence with FourPlay. Trumpeter Simon Ferenci, meanwhile, is an
alumnus of the award-winning Jazzgroove Mothership Orchestra. Each
guest adds the subtlest of colours to Purdy’s explorative
soundscapes, never overwhelming or overplaying – there’s no
discursive jazz-noodling or moments of jagged avant-garde dissonance,
though a track like ‘The View Below’ could have easily descended
into either while still sitting comfortably within the otherwise more
contemplative tracks. One reviewer has suggested In
Transit exhibits an ECM kind
of feel in places. Perhaps it more closely reflects the kind of thing
electronic composers closer to home, like David Chesworth or Graeme
Revell, were exploring in the 1990s or even as far back as their
respective first bands, Essendon Airport and SPK. Either way, In
Transit is a lovely piece of
work
MICHAEL
SMITH
Purdy - Body Variations SOFT009
Presented as a single suite, Body Variations is a cinematic journey in sound by Sydney producer and composer Purdy. Moody, soft and haunting, but with a dash of wry humour, the composition is a series of short movements that evolve texturally. It spans across abstract instrumental interjections and melodic explorations, alienating soundscapes, wavering high frequencies, sparse percussion and sampled dialogue in the first half. The second half opens with humour, a lopsided country tune, complete with animals in the periphery, which leads into a beat-driven, piano-led suspension of time. Intriguing, amusing and eerie, this is a beautiful work.
Amorina Fitzgerald-Hood - themusic 4 stars
Kevin Purdy is somewhat of a Sydney institution with his long history in music production
spanning acts such as Tooth and most notable in his solo guise, with a series of mysterious
and wonderful audio documents over the past ten years.Body Variations is a forty minute exercise in psyched-out and delightfully dusty cinematic
pop. In some ways a return to the tone and feel of his 2004 pop ubermensch Fairytale
Insurance, Body Variations is refreshingly idiosyncratic and freeform. I have always
interpreted Purdy’s style as an advanced form of melodic-Krautrock, incorporating effective
repetition and driving percussion that provides a rock-solid bedrock for deft improvisation
and playful melodic movement.
The six minute introductory piece offers the jaunty and playful melodic crux of the whole
movement, then seamlessly and startlingly segueways into a wistful yet beautiful cascading
groove. Transient two bar loops of static and whirrs appear nestled around the more formed
pieces with recurrent melodic motifs developing, then deconstructing. Morse-code-like
single note synths chirp away amongst the mix of organic washes of sound and chords.
Unexpected vocal and instrumental sampling introduces what appears to be the second movement, and lingers just long enough to be a very effective transition into a more beat driven jam, only to reduce back to esoteric spookiness and spoken word, with the ever present crackle of vinyl surface-noise.
A Hoedown space jam then briefly ensues before traversing back to the recurring theme of the entire piece (a two part drone-style chord). Fantastic lilting string lines then magically appear (courtesy of Peter Hollo of Fourplay). Said string part is then countered by some more sombre sounding horn parts that offer suitable segway to the second half of the work.
The twenty minute mark heralds a short respite of sorts, with magpies squawking as an introduction to the playful and oddly farmyard/barnyard-themed reprise conjuring up scenes of dusty open roads and endless optimism. The piece eventually retracts to reveal beautiful shards of cello accompanied by flowing monosynth bass runs, motioning toward the thirty minute point that arrives with very clever use of found sound and speech snippets that effectively act like punctuation marks throughout the entire record (something that works startlingly effectively for a concept so deceptively simple).
A more brooding minimal groove then materialises, teasing with its hooks, yet never blooms into full stride, instead managing to intrigue and perplex in the best way possible. Eventually a wonderful dusty groove surfaces, featuring the lilting percussion and ever-playful basslines that remain a colourful feature throughout the whole experience. The ebbing groove subsides to reveal the ever-shimmering cello and piano refrain that concludes the album.
Unexpected vocal and instrumental sampling introduces what appears to be the second movement, and lingers just long enough to be a very effective transition into a more beat driven jam, only to reduce back to esoteric spookiness and spoken word, with the ever present crackle of vinyl surface-noise.
A Hoedown space jam then briefly ensues before traversing back to the recurring theme of the entire piece (a two part drone-style chord). Fantastic lilting string lines then magically appear (courtesy of Peter Hollo of Fourplay). Said string part is then countered by some more sombre sounding horn parts that offer suitable segway to the second half of the work.
The twenty minute mark heralds a short respite of sorts, with magpies squawking as an introduction to the playful and oddly farmyard/barnyard-themed reprise conjuring up scenes of dusty open roads and endless optimism. The piece eventually retracts to reveal beautiful shards of cello accompanied by flowing monosynth bass runs, motioning toward the thirty minute point that arrives with very clever use of found sound and speech snippets that effectively act like punctuation marks throughout the entire record (something that works startlingly effectively for a concept so deceptively simple).
A more brooding minimal groove then materialises, teasing with its hooks, yet never blooms into full stride, instead managing to intrigue and perplex in the best way possible. Eventually a wonderful dusty groove surfaces, featuring the lilting percussion and ever-playful basslines that remain a colourful feature throughout the whole experience. The ebbing groove subsides to reveal the ever-shimmering cello and piano refrain that concludes the album.
Purdy remains a unique, wonderful and undervalued Australian artist whose repertoire is gradually becoming a stellar pastiche of the melodic, found and or sampled sound, live playing, and very very clever production and arrangement. Body Variations is such a logical and satisfying progression from his Illumination album of 2012, and I for one will wait with delight and anticipation for his next adventure in audio.
Tim Koch - Cyclic Defrost
Australian artist Purdy has just made his 5th solo album entitled 'Body Variations', and it is a song cycle without lyrics. Beguiling and straight forward, it is in the actual time it takes to listen to the whole piece that you find the complexity and treats that make it really worthwhile.
Tim Ritchie - Sound Quality ABC RN
Listening to Purdy’s Body Variations is like
falling through time, moving backwards and forwards through Middle
Eastern dances, robotic voices and a disorientating barnyard. The
electronica flow is continuous throughout, changing but never dropping.
Static mixes with acoustic music, crackling and cutting, in and out,
in the style of a much older recording. This is a mélange of sound, each
jumping over each other like a well practiced circus act.Though it is filled with juxtaposing elements, it continues to progress to a steady beat, marching on and lingering in the mind.
Sarah Pritchard - Alt Media
A musical chameleon, I first came across Kevin Purdy when he was curating what was basically a psych-pop orchestra, for a record called Deviant Nature, a project which -from what I understand- was like herding cats and took forever, the results were amazing though. Kevin didn’t dwell on it however, soon moving on to atmospheric, ambient soundscapes and field recordings collected in an album called Illumination. A subtly evocative record, it studded the ambient landscape with a variety of samples fleshing out a wide range of moods and imaginary places. His latest gambit, a record called Body Variations is like an expansion of that, bringing a variety of beats to a collage of sounds and samples. Actually, it’s like a combination of both Illumination and Deviant Nature, gathering live instrumentation and psychedelia into this wide-ranging work.
It’s almost overawing and that’s at least partially a consequence of Purdy’s decision to present this as one forty minute slab of music with subtle variations on a theme that recurs regularly throughout the piece. There’s a lot in the way that it initially presents which is ‘electronic’: the downbeat lull of the four-four rhythm, the looped piano line and a few synthesisers. It reminded me of the eclectic work of Danish producer Trentemoller (another prepared to bring together beats and country for a hootenanny), but, as you’ll notice when the multi-layered lines build to a head-melting, hypnotic climax, only four minutes in, this is more ambitious, not least because there’s quite a bit of ‘live’ jamming worked into the skein of Body Variations.
Six minutes will get you to a six-eight beat on -is that- steel drums? Layers of background graininess add a mysterious air, another signature element. It’s as though so much time has been spent with the music that Purdy couldn’t help himself but go back and keep laying over new sounds on an already crowded mix. He’s a gifted orchestrator though and nothing ever totters or collapses in on itself, the layering might be nearly impenetrable but it always sounds good. A regular rock beat jumps in at nine and a half minutes driving some fuzzy synth harmonies. Some hilarious ‘drug-panic’ movie samples cue a jazzy drum break at thirteen before bursting into a euphoric vocal loop that Fatboy Slim might find appealing. Then vinyl fuzz and a toffy British voice-over rise to the top of the murk, it could be an indulgent slice of Madlib’s noodlings.
Fiddle and the return of the opening piano loop give a strangely countrified feeling to a range of noises, including horns, strings and farm animals at the midway mark. Everything starts rattling along like a train on a track, interspersed with some weird rock’n’roll. It’s like a very self-indulgent David Lynch dream sequence. Over the third quarter of the piece dark soundscapes grasp and pinch at a recurring psych folk refrain and sludgy vocal samples slide drunkenly across. The final quarter is heralded by darkly funky bass, glitchy beats and ...sleigh bells? Lovely cello solo too. A dusty and countrified downbeat loop takes over, building in intensity before everything evaporates through a slow reiteration of the original theme.
I guess it’s because there’s so much going on in Body Variations that new references - Coldcut, Pan Sonic, Steinski- keep suggesting themselves to me every time I listen. What it really says is: there’s a lot to get out of this. A quietly fascinating scrapbook of styles, much like Kevin Purdy always has been, a deceptively still water that goes as deep as you’re prepared to follow.
- Chris Cobcroft - 4ZZZ Reviews
The 40 minutes of Body Variations is one long piece by Sydney composer Kevin Purdy that could well be the equivalent of a drive through wider Sydney. The familiar and the suddenly revealed around a blind corner strike you equally and elegant touches with hints of past glories exist not far from the hollow emptiness of man-made impositions. You are always on the verge of taking a turn you might regret, but also never long from some striking natural element looming up from nowhere. There are discoloured moments, twitchy and febrile, which are neither day nor night but never really touched by natural light or comfort. There are almost swinging sections that fall somewhere between carnival and nursing home volunteer's concert. Some moments nudge and prod and then open up into a freeway drive, rhythm tracks rolling onwards as the vocal samples sneak in. And some peaceful interludes are almost hypnotic. It may be that some ideas are left to run a bit too long but there's momentum here in Purdy's work that carries you past those doubts.
Bernard Zuel - SMH - 4 stars
Kevin Purdy – Illumination SOFT008
About a year and a half ago, Sydneysider Kevin Purdy released an album titled Deviant Nature, on which he stepped away from the lyrical soundscapes for which he'd become known, particularly through his work in Tooth, for more straightforward song structures and pop harmonies.
With Illumination, released in a limited-edition vinyl LP format, he's returned to those soundscapes. Armed with just a guitar and a classic Prophet 5 analogue synthesiser, he's created five intriguing and profoundly ethereal pieces of contemplative ambience that you'll probably only get to hear on Brent Clough's The Night Air on Radio National, which at least provides a much-needed outlet for this sort of work.
I must admit the most intriguing aspect of this sort of album is just how you compose these sort of works, which are obviously beautifully crafted yet seem to exist, in a sense, beyond the concept of an artist actually sitting down and working out notes and arrangements. Much like the random field sounds, quite literally, of birds and the wind through trees and the ambience of nature itself that provides a subtle context upon which Purdy then allows his own generated sounds to drift in the opening piece of side two, Here Above, In Silence, it almost feels as if the piece has created itself, not quite randomly but without anything more than the composer being present to press the record button and capture what slips out of the subconscious.
The dreamy minimalism of the first two pieces - First Light Through Mist and Heat Of The Morning Earth - are the perfect accompaniment to imagining yourself seeing that light and feeling that heat as your mind drifts with the sounds (best experienced through headphones), before the unexpected percussive rhythm of Mountains Dreaming revs things up, taking you out of side one. The longest piece, Cloud Shadows On Hill, which competes side two, features sound poet Amanda Stewart delivering thoughts and ideas whispered at the edge of consciousness as sounds evolve and devolve around them.
All up Illumination is quite a journey
Michael Smith - Drum - 24/8/12
In his first album under his full name, the Sydney based artist formerly known as Purdy returns with a new direction. His previous three solo albums, and his criminally underrated work in Tooth, served up a smorgasbord of sun-kissed psychedelic exotica, with traces of everything from kosmische to electronic pop, yet for Illumination Purdy strips back his ingredients dramatically.
What's left is an E-bow and guitar alongside some synth, as well as field recordings. Interestingly, he's also stripped back his melodic desire for structure. We're not talking songs anymore, rather we're dealing with evocative pieces of sound, textures that initially bring to mind the sci-fi noir of Vangelis' Blade Runner score. There's a density to the music too, with things whirring and bubbling beneath sustained drones and gentle runs of notes.
Mountains Dreaming is the only beat-based tune, perhaps the closest thing to his earlier work, yet it's slow and heavy and the textures just float on by. If anything the beats make it feel even more amorphous, a demonstration of what Purdy hasn't chosen to anchor his sounds to.
Here Above, In Silence is the best track on the album, Purdy delves into childlike melodic sound art, with recordings of birds and bizarre unexplained textural sounds, while also fiddling with sweeping, lush synth pads. Cloud Shadows On Hill is an at times atonal experimental piece, with scraping strings and creepy close mic'd wordless vocals from guest Amanda Stewart. It's Purdy at his most experimental, yet also most creative, on an exciting risk-taking album that really pushes his artistic and creative boundaries.
Bob Baker Fish - Inpress June 2012
As one member of Sydney trio TOOTH, or under his own name, Kevin Purdy's music is instantly recognisable with its intricately woven patchwork of samples, tones and rhythms, yet very accessible and often with a sense of fun and frivolity. Illumination is a surprising turn though, dense and textural ambience with a sometimes melancholic edge draws the listener in to a veritable cathedral of space, atmosphere and other-worldliness. His best work to date in my opinion.
EVAN CARR - The Art of BLEEP! 3PBS FM
As one member of Sydney trio TOOTH, or under his own name, Kevin Purdy's music is instantly recognisable with its intricately woven patchwork of samples, tones and rhythms, yet very accessible and often with a sense of fun and frivolity. Illumination is a surprising turn though, dense and textural ambience with a sometimes melancholic edge draws the listener in to a veritable cathedral of space, atmosphere and other-worldliness. His best work to date in my opinion.
EVAN CARR - The Art of BLEEP! 3PBS FM
Kevin Purdy is a stellar muso, producer, composer, arranger
and many other things besides. I've been following him and the
scintillating trail of psych, prog, kraut, folk, pop ambiance that leaks
woozily into his wake for a while now, but to read over his long and
storied bio I still feel like a big ignoramus. Since the '90s (which is
now, officially, a long time ago), Kev's been laying down stuff as
variously, Tooth, Purdy and Kevin Purdy and with every new thing he
does, the Australian music media have followed close behind with
celebratory fanfares and plaudits, yelling to anyone who will listen,
this gear is awesome, get a faceful of it.
I don't think any of it
sticks, though. Were I to walk down the street and ask the next ten
people I meet 'who the heck is Kevin Purdy?', I think I'd be met with a
lot of not knowing. If any record was ever going to shoot the Purdy
brand into the shiny light of stardom, it should have been 2010's
Deviant Nature. Years in the making, because it involved an orchestra
sized collection of folks to create, it was every bit a
psych-folk-rock-pop masterpiece that blew the socks off everyone who got
to hear it. Still, no ARIA that year. That being the case, Kevin
Purdy's latest work, Illumination, is, I'm sad to say, extraordinarily
unlikely to change Kev's situation. Working as Kevin Purdy this time
round, he's said goodbye to the small army who helped on Deviant Nature
and leaned back into some seriously relaxing ambiance. Ever since Eno
coined the term, there's been very few breakout hits busting out of the
ambient genre, but those of you who give Kevin Purdy's Illumination a go
will find yourselves well compensated for your time. At it's best
ambient, as in other musical styles that work with seemingly limited
palettes, is all about employing musical resources subtly and
strategically to produce clever, often unexpected effects. Using, nearly
exclusively, just guitar and synthesiser (with just a few samples and
the rarest vocal) to produce great sheets of sound, the results are
exceptionally nuanced.
The five, long-form pieces that make up
llumination are all based on themes of landscape and the environment,
which the music evokes majestically. Very majestically, really, I caught
myself being reminded, just once or twice, for instance on the track
Heat Of The Morning Earth, of the very best work that ol' cheese-meister
Vangelis did on the soundtrack to Bladerunner; it doesn't get much more
majestic than that, does it? I'd've loved to have played that track on
the radio, but, well, nearly eight minutes there. If there was to be a
radio-sized slice off this record it would be the track, Mountains
Dreaming. It breaks from the pattern of the record by featuring more
samples than the rest of this combined, but that's still not that many,
really. Reverb laced drums and samples of buzzing sitars, drunkenly,
boisterously bleeping machines or an occasional blast of sax haunt a
soundscape that sounds as wide as the sky and the quietly moaning vocal
in the background, which I believe comes courtesy of Amanda Stewart, is
exquisite.
There's much more to enjoy, in the warm guitar distortion of
First Light Through Mist, or the enveloping peace of Here Above, In
Silence or the unsettled mutterings and dissonant crunches of noise that
inhabit what sounds like a disturbing train journey in the epic Cloud
Shadows On A Hill.
I had a good time with Kevin Purdy's Illumination. Like I said, ambient music being what it is and Kevin Purdy being who he is, I don't expect to see this on too many end-of-year-best lists, but I will be thinking of it, I am certain, for some time to come.
I had a good time with Kevin Purdy's Illumination. Like I said, ambient music being what it is and Kevin Purdy being who he is, I don't expect to see this on too many end-of-year-best lists, but I will be thinking of it, I am certain, for some time to come.
Chris Cobcroft - 4ZZZ Reviews
Purdy – Deviant Nature SOFT007
Purdy wants to be played
loud. How else can you get the full effect of the ’60′s exotica and
psychedelic washes of bright, full sound billowing past you? There’s so
much going on – trumpeting horns, wheezing synths, whispering vocals,
hand percussion, samples and field recordings. In fact, it’s almost a
crime not to crank it up so you can fully realise and experience
everything.
Deviant Nature is an
album that has a real sun-kissed vibe, a little similar to Caribou but
much less shoegazey. Purdy has a joyful, childish exuberance and he’s
painting it bright yellow across his music, which feels like playtime at
the local kindergarten, just as chaotic but perhaps a little more
contained. He also sings on a lot of the tracks, sounding a little
Britpop. Yet don’t be discouraged – as he sings, the music is reaching
around, trying to bury him because, make no mistake, this music is
alive. It’s been fed too much red cordial and now it won’t go down for a
nap.
It’s Sydneysider Kevin
Purdy’s third solo album and it really extends upon the lush, beautiful,
exotic strangeness of his previous two, as well as his other band the
prog psych sweethearts Tooth. There’s also a real pop element to this
album at times. It still possesses that library music quality but at
times Purdy seems anxious to sing his songs. But it’s when they extend
and break out, the sounds swirling around madly, the music just
sauntering along casually, like the aptly titled Floating, Waving, Repeating Signs
that you really understand the craft at play here. There’s so much
going on, so many sounds. Yet it’s full without feeling busy. And when
you get a chance to really listen to the amount of plates he’s spinning
at once it’s nothing short of a joy. If you like your psych pop
exuberant, exotic and cheeky then Purdy is your man.
Bob Baker Fish – Inpress 08/12/10
It has been five years since Purdy’s Fairytale Insurance and Deviant Nature
is the culmination of his work during this time. The trademark Purdy
sound is still there, with lush, layered psych-pop creating sonic
landscapes that no other musician could muster.
While Purdy is known to work wonders all on his own, there is a collection of local artists present on Deviant Nature,
including Jim Denley, Alex Crowfoot, Margery Smith, Christian
Houllemare, John Maddox, Joseph Leonard, Donna Amini and Rory Toomey.
The addition of great talent sees Purdy developing his signature sound,
while enhancing his cinematic, psychedelic scope. While essentially an
instrumental record, Purdy has used vocals to express his meaning,
something not normally widely executed in his compositions.
The instrumentals are still there making their presence known, especially with the progressive styling of Tomijandalien. The album is a great blend of differing sounds and styles, from full-blown prog tracks to soft psych-pop (Missing you in the air, Majik Chimes) all the way to shuffling grooves (Floating Waving, Repeating Signs, I Know, You Said).
Purdy is a master of his art and Deviant Nature
is concrete proof that his ability to create some of the best
mind-bending music will only grow as time goes on. Here he has tied
together so many different elements and has come away with an
interesting and complete listening experience. He is one of Australia’s
most imaginative producers, artists and arrangers; the long wait
between albums was definitely worth it
Christine Caruana – Drum Magazine 8/3/11
That Kevin
Purdy’s album is listed as electronic is at least as much about
philosophy as it is about equipment: this is about constructing pieces
from sources that are varied and not always immediately compatible but
that, in the end, make pop music.
The last time the Melbourne based (Sydney actually folks)
Purdy appeared in these pages was nearly five years ago with his group
Tooth, which ranged across various shades of rock and studio-conceived
music. Purdy on his own goes the same way. You may often recognise the
stepping stones within the songs, but you can’t be sure of the direction
in which you’re heading.
For example, in one sense, a track such as I Know, You Said
is trippy acid rock that dances, coos and throws off sunbeams. But pull
apart its components and you’ll find yourself hearing a laptop blend
that isn’t far from the folktronica of early Tunng.
Maybe the story is in the names. A couple of telling track titles are In Her Head She Was Dancing and I Hear Voices…Voices.
The latter opens the album like an antipodean take on Canadian producer
Dan Snaith of Caribou, with sweet and sour elements that would shuffle
into line for what would have made a fascinating late-’60′s Italian film
soundtrack. The former is like putting a crooner into a hippie commune
and watching as he goes native.
In both cases,
the imagination takes over, leaving Purdy’s musical choices into the
background to a certain extent. Far from being a negative, I think
that’s what he wants: to free the front of your mind from details such
as what’s making what noise, so you can take the whole trip with him.
Bernard Zuel – SMH Spectrum 22/01/11
This album of Kevin Purdy, a Sydney based musician and producer, has been released on his own label Soft Records in October 2010. It was my first listen to his very eclectic and elaborate music. At first I was struggling a bit with those longish, sometimes kinda ethno instrumental sequences, but then began liking it a lot the more often I listened to it. His arrangements are a strange mix of late Beach Boys/Van Dyke Parks/early Belle and Sebastian (I love the horn arrangement and sound!) paired with (forgive me Kevin if you read this) a bit Nick Cave-ish vocals (Que? kp). Anyway, take a look at the man’s influences, listen to his music and you know what I’m talking about.
Conclusion: Great album.
Marco Trovatello - http://superpolar.org
Tooth – Mudlarking SOFT006
Tooth are a Sydney collective defying definition. Balancincing overtly melodic samples, broken beats, disembodied voices and processed frequencies with live instrumentation. Their aural murals are a soft-focus journey through some ’20s mescalin inspired hollywood dreamscape.
This double-disc set juxtaposes their rich aural murals with symphonic lounge funk, choral samples, and a cascading musicality and eclecticism – all achieve without diving into indulgence.
The Marketplace showcases sung vocals, and Nuffin is the soundtrack to an imaginary B-grade cartoon.
Key track: Sorry Cake launches us into a funky galaxy of cell, horns, treated guitars and jet propulsion!
The Marketplace showcases sung vocals, and Nuffin is the soundtrack to an imaginary B-grade cartoon.
Key track: Sorry Cake launches us into a funky galaxy of cell, horns, treated guitars and jet propulsion!
Johnathan Alley – Sunday Age – Preview – 4 stars -June 11 – 2006
For those who like a clearly defined music label, the sad news is there are good arguments for putting this album by Sydney trio Tooth into any of five categories.
But because art is at its heart, whether
But because art is at its heart, whether
expressed as electronic musings, throbbing krautrock, adventurous rock, film noir soundtrack or the borders of jazz fusion. its most appropriate term is progressive rock. And proud of it.
Tooth spread themselves across two tracks, which seems appropriate given the expansiveness of their interests. From the swirling afro-tinged Avoiding the road to recovery (equal parts Eno/Bowie experiments and 70's Italian horror film) to the noodling synths of the funky little beast Nuffin. Tooth aren't short of ideas.
Tooth spread themselves across two tracks, which seems appropriate given the expansiveness of their interests. From the swirling afro-tinged Avoiding the road to recovery (equal parts Eno/Bowie experiments and 70's Italian horror film) to the noodling synths of the funky little beast Nuffin. Tooth aren't short of ideas.
In many ways they work in territory as likely to be occupied by American hip-hop’s DJ Shadow as German art rockers Can. Interesting company to keep.
Bernard Zuel - SMH - May 2006
Mesmeric Sydney duo , Tooth, finally deliver their third sprawling album. Housed in a mystic double gatefold, the two-disc epic swirls with creativity, referencing the band's forgone output and the individual musical journeys trekked by members Sir Robbo, Kevin Purdy and John Maddox. Those familiar with Tooth will recognise familiar sound stopovers and the band's unique mantra rhythms, but all should be spirited away with the transcendental canterings in this new zigzagging trip.
This latest set unfurls like rolling fog, sometimes engulfing the listener in spiraling surges, elsewhere thinning into fine sonic mists. Again it's a post-rock cumulus alchemised from collected samples, programming and live instrumentation, where wandering instrumentals go in search of gold, chugging like whimsical mechanical inventions that have come to life at the touch of a wand, rather than tapping the standard notion of 'groove'. It should be said however that in tracks like Nuffin, Tooth nail '70's vice grooves, with hair flying and flares flapping commendably.
This latest set unfurls like rolling fog, sometimes engulfing the listener in spiraling surges, elsewhere thinning into fine sonic mists. Again it's a post-rock cumulus alchemised from collected samples, programming and live instrumentation, where wandering instrumentals go in search of gold, chugging like whimsical mechanical inventions that have come to life at the touch of a wand, rather than tapping the standard notion of 'groove'. It should be said however that in tracks like Nuffin, Tooth nail '70's vice grooves, with hair flying and flares flapping commendably.
The album opens with Paris Shades, whose tingling harpsicord melody and marking time gait, owes much to Roy Budd's Get Carter theme, or countless European espionage flicks. Elsewhere, Lalo Schifrin style soundtrakers are found prowling the shadows of numerous great tunes. Two track in however, and the beats solidifying. The firmament darkens with strings, melting guitars, thereminesque quivers and reversed snatches, all swirling overhead. Throughout we encounter strange swamps and moats slowly churning with the ghostly echoes of drowned monks, but by tack eight - the almost triumphant Passing Through - delivery comes at the tunnel's far end. Here, picnicking in an enchanted forest, the promise of disc two's further adventures beckons.
As disc two begins, we find ourselves in the near medieval Marketplace with Daevid Allen (Gong/Soft Machine) conjuring a dark, Celtic lament. Allen is just on of the guests who added further guitar, moog, strings, marimba, drums and horns, to a pot stirred by Tooth's wizards.
Paris Pompor - Drum Media May 2006
Somewhere within the specular triangulation of the kraut of Can, the linear jazz of The Necks and the tribal percussion of Arthur Nyman lies Tooth. Not short on ideas or material, the band’s third album is a
double album opus of audio exploration. Centred around their penchant for blissed-out groove,
Mudlarking sees this Sydney trio taking some adventurous steps into an unknown psychedelic heaven.
This heady mixture is a lot to get lost in, a strange brew that’s a remarkably impressive and totally uncontrived journey through a constellation of mini-utopias.
Mark Leg – Time Off – Qld
Sydney three piece Tooth create the kind of music that you can’t believe was constructed by humans. Possessing a confident, almost stately grandeur, their sounds on 2001’s Sirens From Here To Titan seemed to exist in the past, the soundtrack to a late fifties boys own nautical adventure serial. It’s scope felt huge, yet it has positively been eclipsed by Mudlarking.
This double disc album is an epic, not just because it consists of eighteen tracks, but because of the way Tooth have extended their styles and approach in the interim. It’s a strange swirly mass of sound that exists like a giant fun rollicking soundtrack where you can throw around words like, Krautrock, psychedialia, downtempo, prog, and not ever get remotely close to the canvas. It’s a hard record to consciously listen to as you keep floating away.
Its very groove based and it emphasises that Tooth are operating in a different time zone than the rest of the world, such is their patience and restraint.
At times it verges on fourth world thanks to a few faux world music ingredients, though these are only hints that appear alongside samples or an impossibly funky bass line. It’s probably an electronic record yet it’s imbued with a vaguely cluttered sense of soul that propels these incredible tunes. It feels like it exists in the past referencing earnestly jammed out 60’s psychedelia, yet these are linked into current day beats and sample techniques, which somehow gives it an instant yet ironically somewhat dated credibility. They’ve teamed up with legendary weirdo experimentalist Daevid Allen, co founder of the Soft Machine and leader of Gong, along with members of Fourplay, Prop, Something for Kate, and Meta Bass.
There is not a single misstep. Each song is an opus.
Bob Baker Fish – Cyclic Defrost – 1st June '06
Often the beauty in a CD is its ability to evoke a certain sense or emotion and Sydney three piece Tooth have created an audio adventure with their latest offering Mudlarking. It's hard to define exactly what kind of music graces this double CD but it doesn't seem to matter as you enter a headphone world of surreal cinematic sounds.
This album would be best described as a science fiction western, where cloaked creatures roam an endless prairie of post urban landscapes and empty moon landing stations which are now inhabited by jovial characters that only speak in samples. Fusing some of Sydney's best musicians on a range of instruments to create an album for lovers of both accoustic and electronic music, this holds emotion and tension that is best suited to your own private mind or played load outdoors. Slightly on the abstracted side of rock driven guitars break a false dream state that epic and repeating beats lull you into. Best described by Tooth themselves as the enchanting wizzard of rhythm they have managed to capture a true sense of overwhelming musical power.
Think Decoder Ring, Tortoise, or early Boards of Canada in eerie accoustic mode. It will draw you in from beginning to end and defiantly deserves to be played in full.
Chen Binyarnos - Brag - 17 July '06
Somewhere within the specular triangulation of the kraut of Can, the linear jazz of The Necks and the tribal percussion of Arthur Nyman lies Tooth. Not short on ideas or material, the band’s third album is a
double album opus of audio exploration. Centred around their penchant for blissed-out groove,
Mudlarking sees this Sydney trio taking some adventurous steps into an unknown psychedelic heaven.
This heady mixture is a lot to get lost in, a strange brew that’s a remarkably impressive and totally uncontrived journey through a constellation of mini-utopias.
Mark Leg – Time Off – Qld
Sydney three piece Tooth create the kind of music that you can’t believe was constructed by humans. Possessing a confident, almost stately grandeur, their sounds on 2001’s Sirens From Here To Titan seemed to exist in the past, the soundtrack to a late fifties boys own nautical adventure serial. It’s scope felt huge, yet it has positively been eclipsed by Mudlarking.
This double disc album is an epic, not just because it consists of eighteen tracks, but because of the way Tooth have extended their styles and approach in the interim. It’s a strange swirly mass of sound that exists like a giant fun rollicking soundtrack where you can throw around words like, Krautrock, psychedialia, downtempo, prog, and not ever get remotely close to the canvas. It’s a hard record to consciously listen to as you keep floating away.
Its very groove based and it emphasises that Tooth are operating in a different time zone than the rest of the world, such is their patience and restraint.
At times it verges on fourth world thanks to a few faux world music ingredients, though these are only hints that appear alongside samples or an impossibly funky bass line. It’s probably an electronic record yet it’s imbued with a vaguely cluttered sense of soul that propels these incredible tunes. It feels like it exists in the past referencing earnestly jammed out 60’s psychedelia, yet these are linked into current day beats and sample techniques, which somehow gives it an instant yet ironically somewhat dated credibility. They’ve teamed up with legendary weirdo experimentalist Daevid Allen, co founder of the Soft Machine and leader of Gong, along with members of Fourplay, Prop, Something for Kate, and Meta Bass.
There is not a single misstep. Each song is an opus.
Bob Baker Fish – Cyclic Defrost – 1st June '06
Often the beauty in a CD is its ability to evoke a certain sense or emotion and Sydney three piece Tooth have created an audio adventure with their latest offering Mudlarking. It's hard to define exactly what kind of music graces this double CD but it doesn't seem to matter as you enter a headphone world of surreal cinematic sounds.
This album would be best described as a science fiction western, where cloaked creatures roam an endless prairie of post urban landscapes and empty moon landing stations which are now inhabited by jovial characters that only speak in samples. Fusing some of Sydney's best musicians on a range of instruments to create an album for lovers of both accoustic and electronic music, this holds emotion and tension that is best suited to your own private mind or played load outdoors. Slightly on the abstracted side of rock driven guitars break a false dream state that epic and repeating beats lull you into. Best described by Tooth themselves as the enchanting wizzard of rhythm they have managed to capture a true sense of overwhelming musical power.
Think Decoder Ring, Tortoise, or early Boards of Canada in eerie accoustic mode. It will draw you in from beginning to end and defiantly deserves to be played in full.
Chen Binyarnos - Brag - 17 July '06
Purdy - Fairytale Insurance - SOFT004
Sydney-based multi-instrumentalist,
producer, songwriter and radio presenter Kevin Purdy first made ripples
on the Australian electronic music scene back in the late 1990s when he
released his independent ‘Sugar’ 7”. From there on he’s followed a
fairly prolific path, contributing a plethora of tracks to Australian
compilations ranging from Groovescooter’s ‘Refashioned’ collection of
re-interpretations of Oz-rock classics to the excellent DumpHuck Records
‘Beat and Squelch’ series.
As well as being known far and wide as a core member of prog-laced psychedelic outfit Tooth, who have a pair of albums (1999’s ‘No Strings’ and 2001’s ‘Sirens From Here To Titan’) under their belts, Purdy also released his debut solo artist album ‘Kevolution’ on his own Soft Records imprint in 2000, which was greeted with widespread acclaim both locally and overseas, and captured his organic fusion of live guitars, drums and keyboards with dance rhythms and programmed beats. Since the release of ‘Kevolution’, things have been comparatively quiet from Purdy, with only the release of a new 12” ‘Shift’ in 2001 from Tooth breaking the silence.
Now, a full four years later, Purdy has re-emerged with his second album ‘Fairytale Insurance’, and it’s obvious from even an initial listen that he certainly hasn’t been spending his time idly. ‘Fairytale Insurance’ is packed with all of the meticulous construction and widescreen textures that made ‘Kevolution’ such an arresting record, but in this case, the Morricone-esque cinematic qualities of the tunes have been pushed up even further and there’s a slightly darker underlying tone compared to the sunnier parts of ‘Kevolution.’ For this second album, Purdy has also assembled a cast of talented musicians from the Sydney live music scene to aid him in bringing these tracks to life, including John Maddox (Tooth / The Sleepy Jackson) on bass, Kim Moyes (Prop / The Presets) on vibraphone, Bobby Singh (The Bird) on tablas and Peter Hollo (Fourplay / Raven) on cello.
‘Sleep Well’ opens this nine-track collection with downtempo echoing drums, lush strings, melancholy electric guitar strokes and a mournful harmonica that’s straight out of a Morricone score to a Western movie – squint, and you can almost see the battle-weary cowboy lurching on his battered steed towards a Sergio Leone sunset. In comparison to previous album ‘Kevolution’, the presence of electronic elements is light, mainly restricted to the looping and manipulation of instrumental performances, rather than anything too outre digital, and it’s this organic fusion of sampled textures and real performances that lends ‘Fairytale Insurance’ a ‘fuller’ feel closer to that of a band than the archetypical lone electronic producer. By comparison, ‘On The Roof Of The World’ is more upbeat, and opens with a kung-fu movie sample before sliding into an easy-going looped-drumbeat groove that’s one part surf-rock and another part Stereolab-esque moog-driven motorik, while ‘The Secret Smile In The Camel Girl’s Eyes’ wanders through lush Arabian Nights territory, filled with snaking Middle-Eastern flutes, foreboding cinematic strings and strummed acoustic guitar, in one of this album’s most unabashedly epic moments.
‘3 Friends To The Stars’ has a perceptible jazz shuffle to it, and places some jaunty wah-guitar which bends in some JJ Cale-esque directions over a sampled voice talking about “the stars being your guide” and a rush of distant stirring strings, before ‘The Grip’ fades in over clicking delayed-out drum machine beats and slides into an ominous swamp-blues guitar riff over thick beds of Hammond
‘Harry’s Day’ opens with the titular Harry musing “Yes…it’s been an interesting day…very interesting”, before an ominous descending chord sequence kicks in, injecting an underlying sense of foreboding and dread below a shuffling drum loop that’s one half jazz shuffle, the other half industrial percussion, just before some suitably smoky trumpet glides through dense washes of sound. Dark textural noir for the inner cinema between your ears. Finally, ‘Happy Ending’ brings this album to a relatively upbeat and lighthearted close, with vibraphone slides and Pet Sounds-esque strings cushioning a lush bed of vocal harmonies and even manages to squeeze some sampled seagulls in there too. Brian Wilson would be proud.
Meticulously assembled and exquisitely produced, ‘Fairytale Insurance’ references the classic intricate production arrangements of Pet Sounds and Ennio Morricone as much as it does likeminded contemporary experimentalists such as Stereolab and Broadcast. Fluid, heartfelt and consistently intriguing, ‘Fairytale Insurance’ is confidently poised to further cement Kevin Purdy’s reputation as one of Australia’s most imaginative and adept producers and arrangers. Magnificent.
As well as being known far and wide as a core member of prog-laced psychedelic outfit Tooth, who have a pair of albums (1999’s ‘No Strings’ and 2001’s ‘Sirens From Here To Titan’) under their belts, Purdy also released his debut solo artist album ‘Kevolution’ on his own Soft Records imprint in 2000, which was greeted with widespread acclaim both locally and overseas, and captured his organic fusion of live guitars, drums and keyboards with dance rhythms and programmed beats. Since the release of ‘Kevolution’, things have been comparatively quiet from Purdy, with only the release of a new 12” ‘Shift’ in 2001 from Tooth breaking the silence.
Now, a full four years later, Purdy has re-emerged with his second album ‘Fairytale Insurance’, and it’s obvious from even an initial listen that he certainly hasn’t been spending his time idly. ‘Fairytale Insurance’ is packed with all of the meticulous construction and widescreen textures that made ‘Kevolution’ such an arresting record, but in this case, the Morricone-esque cinematic qualities of the tunes have been pushed up even further and there’s a slightly darker underlying tone compared to the sunnier parts of ‘Kevolution.’ For this second album, Purdy has also assembled a cast of talented musicians from the Sydney live music scene to aid him in bringing these tracks to life, including John Maddox (Tooth / The Sleepy Jackson) on bass, Kim Moyes (Prop / The Presets) on vibraphone, Bobby Singh (The Bird) on tablas and Peter Hollo (Fourplay / Raven) on cello.
‘Sleep Well’ opens this nine-track collection with downtempo echoing drums, lush strings, melancholy electric guitar strokes and a mournful harmonica that’s straight out of a Morricone score to a Western movie – squint, and you can almost see the battle-weary cowboy lurching on his battered steed towards a Sergio Leone sunset. In comparison to previous album ‘Kevolution’, the presence of electronic elements is light, mainly restricted to the looping and manipulation of instrumental performances, rather than anything too outre digital, and it’s this organic fusion of sampled textures and real performances that lends ‘Fairytale Insurance’ a ‘fuller’ feel closer to that of a band than the archetypical lone electronic producer. By comparison, ‘On The Roof Of The World’ is more upbeat, and opens with a kung-fu movie sample before sliding into an easy-going looped-drumbeat groove that’s one part surf-rock and another part Stereolab-esque moog-driven motorik, while ‘The Secret Smile In The Camel Girl’s Eyes’ wanders through lush Arabian Nights territory, filled with snaking Middle-Eastern flutes, foreboding cinematic strings and strummed acoustic guitar, in one of this album’s most unabashedly epic moments.
‘3 Friends To The Stars’ has a perceptible jazz shuffle to it, and places some jaunty wah-guitar which bends in some JJ Cale-esque directions over a sampled voice talking about “the stars being your guide” and a rush of distant stirring strings, before ‘The Grip’ fades in over clicking delayed-out drum machine beats and slides into an ominous swamp-blues guitar riff over thick beds of Hammond
‘Harry’s Day’ opens with the titular Harry musing “Yes…it’s been an interesting day…very interesting”, before an ominous descending chord sequence kicks in, injecting an underlying sense of foreboding and dread below a shuffling drum loop that’s one half jazz shuffle, the other half industrial percussion, just before some suitably smoky trumpet glides through dense washes of sound. Dark textural noir for the inner cinema between your ears. Finally, ‘Happy Ending’ brings this album to a relatively upbeat and lighthearted close, with vibraphone slides and Pet Sounds-esque strings cushioning a lush bed of vocal harmonies and even manages to squeeze some sampled seagulls in there too. Brian Wilson would be proud.
Meticulously assembled and exquisitely produced, ‘Fairytale Insurance’ references the classic intricate production arrangements of Pet Sounds and Ennio Morricone as much as it does likeminded contemporary experimentalists such as Stereolab and Broadcast. Fluid, heartfelt and consistently intriguing, ‘Fairytale Insurance’ is confidently poised to further cement Kevin Purdy’s reputation as one of Australia’s most imaginative and adept producers and arrangers. Magnificent.
evilchris2 - IN THE MIX 4/5/04
Fairytale Insurance is the second album from Sydney based artist Kevin Purdy, who happens to be a key member of Sydney’s Tooth. Following on from 2002’s Kevolution, Purdy himself plays the majority of the instruments, though he is joined by Fourplay’s Peter Hollo (cello) and prop’s Kym Moyes (vibes). ‘On The Roof of the World’ bounces its way along, nodding appreciatively toward Stereolab, but then says its goodbyes to its sexy and quirky krautrock groove and opts for smooth sweeping guitar chords that introduce a nifty chorus. More power to krautrock aesthetics and strong choruses! The wonderfully cinematic ‘The Secret Smile in the Camel Girl’s Eyes’ plods along lusciously as if taken from a cowboy movie - slow groove - dream sequence, complete with ‘outlaws just murdered my wife and child an henceforth my only reason for living is sweet bloody revenge…’ breakdown. ‘3 Friends to the Stars’ immediately reminds of the movie Midnight Cowboy’s melancholy guitar motif and then gets all burbly with submerged synths and vibes, revealing the extent of Purdy’e marvellous cinematic grip on sound production. ‘The Grip’ moves toward more spooky territory, but still allows the luxury of the most sought after groove we all know and love, the cop chase groove. ‘Another World, any Colour’ ever so slowly throbs into an eerily beautiful piece, its placement in the album perfectly bringing the pace down a notch to introduce the wonderfully brooding saunter of ‘Harry’s Day’. ‘Happy Ending’ is in fact not altogether happy, introducing the debut vocal contribution to the album (apart from miscellaneous and thoughtful use of speech samples), featuring the majestic lurking menace that is prevalent throughout all of Fairytale Insurance. This is an album that just seizes your attention and does an outstanding job of holding it. Fairytale Insurance is brimming with simply lovely melodic colour and movement that has you humming to almost every track, and features a slew of perfectly uncluttered tracks, with softly rounded percussion that just merges magically with all the other instrumental work. Essential.
Barry Handler - Cyclic Defrost 12/08/04
Barry Handler - Cyclic Defrost 12/08/04
Extraordinary instrumental atmospheres
If the Orb simply made ambient music instead of ambient dance music, it might sound something like Fairytale Insurance. These lengthy tracks unfold like a dream, all half-remembered fragments and otherworldly textures. Kevin Purdy, the genius behind it all, mixes samples with live instrumentation so seamlessly you can’t tell which is which. Indeed, it’s often hard to work out exactly what is producing some of these noises. That’s precisely the appeal, though. Sleep Well is built on hypnotic tribal drums, hot and steamy as a jungle, before morphing suddenly into a completely different mood with acoustic guitars, harmonica and string lines. That’s nothing though compared to the hallucinatory The Secret Smile In The Camel Girl’s Eyes, an undulating, mirage-like dreamscape that is truly beyond description.
Actually, most of these tunes are beyond description - would it be okay if I just told you that it’s brilliant and you need to hear it for yourself?
If the Orb simply made ambient music instead of ambient dance music, it might sound something like Fairytale Insurance. These lengthy tracks unfold like a dream, all half-remembered fragments and otherworldly textures. Kevin Purdy, the genius behind it all, mixes samples with live instrumentation so seamlessly you can’t tell which is which. Indeed, it’s often hard to work out exactly what is producing some of these noises. That’s precisely the appeal, though. Sleep Well is built on hypnotic tribal drums, hot and steamy as a jungle, before morphing suddenly into a completely different mood with acoustic guitars, harmonica and string lines. That’s nothing though compared to the hallucinatory The Secret Smile In The Camel Girl’s Eyes, an undulating, mirage-like dreamscape that is truly beyond description.
Actually, most of these tunes are beyond description - would it be okay if I just told you that it’s brilliant and you need to hear it for yourself?
RAVE MAGAZINE QLD - 27/4/04
Rob Lyon - RIP IT UP MAG
Fairytale
Insurance isn't an album about a dream insurance policy that
actually pays what you deserve when you make a claim.
This
album is one that continues to grow on me, even after several
listens. Kevin Purdy, aka Purdy, has been playing with gizmos and all
sorts of instruments in a quest for the perfect sound and initially
dabbled in piano and then drums and percussion followed by guitar and
then anything he could lay his hands on.
Some
might recognise this musical genius as part of the formidable duo
going under the guise of Tooth, but now leading the way as a solo
artist in an underground scene where experimentalism is the vogue.
Five years is a long time to have an album in the works but when
something as good as this is the end result, there is no argument
from me about how good this album is.
The
opener, Sleep Well, is enough I feel to whet the appetite of any
listener and sets the scene with a trance-like beat and meandering
guitars. The general gist is more organic than one would have
expected and show how Purdyˆs interests and influences have
evolved from the dance music he has been accustomed to.
It
is always hard to write about something without any lyrics or vocals
and in this case you need to be guided by where the sounds take you.
The album drifts from one end of the spectrum to the other and
everywhere else in between with Secret Smile In The Camel Girlsˆs
Eyes to Here Comes The Specials.
This album is one that continues to grow on me, even after several listens. Rob Lyon - RIP IT UP MAG
While Purdy utilizes left-field production techniques and abstract soundscapes to carry this album of lush instrumental music there’s a noticeable dark pop undercurrent throughout that adds a real freshness and energy to the recording.
Purdy is a local producer who clearly approaches his music unresrained by any commercial considerations. This is virtually a score: moody, evocative and dripping with the kind of pathos that makes it at once endearing and slightly confronting. Nothing sits too comfortably on the ear, the industrial grate of Here Come The Specials, the solid groove of On the Roof of the World and the classic structure of The Grip, colliding with the more cinematic feel of the rest of the album.
This is world class and should be hailed as such.
Zolton Zavros - THE BRAG 26/04/04
It all begins with rain. Then a strengthening beat and guitar. A guitar? On an electronica album? Not to mention the cello and the spaghetti-western harmonica. Let’s forget about the genres right here.
Purdy is Kevin Purdy, an Australian digital artist, producer, composer, and all-round music freak. Fairytale Insurance, his second full length, sees him working with a number of “live” musicians, including tabla player Bobby Singh, as well as playing an orchestra of other instruments himself, lending the album a distinctive and rich flavour that pervades the nine tracks.
On the Roof of the World kicks in with a film sample before revving things up with a mixture of drum and drum machine beats and a twisted pop keyboard refrain that grooves up along with a flat bass accompaniment that stays safely out of the way. The Secret Smile in the Camel Girl’s Eyes is, as you might expect, suffused with a Middle-Eastern feel, yet twinkles like star dust fall in the background. The rhythm even suggests the rise and fall of the camel’s humps, and a cymbal splatters the piece into something darker, more forceful as the beat disappears, guitars and strings swooping through the sonic sky.
Here Come the Specials also begins with a spoken sample before twisting away into loops of what could be flutes, or voices, or any other possibility coming of a laptop. A piano definitely drops in for a while, whilst brushed drums and fluttering percussions zoom around, spooking things as it ebbs and dissipates, leaving way for a female voice to echo, “Our trip’s so foul.”
She’s right, of course - this is not an album you’d want to listen to on acid. It is however one that should be listened to as Happy Ending, part Bhangra grind, part soundtrack vibe, winds the album up, via the harmonies of The Vapour Girls, another instrument to play, to play with.
Purdy’s obvious meticulous attention has meant that Fairytale Insurance only gets better with each listen, the layers of density pealing off and reassembling, never quite revealing its secrets but beckoning the listener to keep coming back.
It all begins with rain. Then a strengthening beat and guitar. A guitar? On an electronica album? Not to mention the cello and the spaghetti-western harmonica. Let’s forget about the genres right here.
Purdy is Kevin Purdy, an Australian digital artist, producer, composer, and all-round music freak. Fairytale Insurance, his second full length, sees him working with a number of “live” musicians, including tabla player Bobby Singh, as well as playing an orchestra of other instruments himself, lending the album a distinctive and rich flavour that pervades the nine tracks.
On the Roof of the World kicks in with a film sample before revving things up with a mixture of drum and drum machine beats and a twisted pop keyboard refrain that grooves up along with a flat bass accompaniment that stays safely out of the way. The Secret Smile in the Camel Girl’s Eyes is, as you might expect, suffused with a Middle-Eastern feel, yet twinkles like star dust fall in the background. The rhythm even suggests the rise and fall of the camel’s humps, and a cymbal splatters the piece into something darker, more forceful as the beat disappears, guitars and strings swooping through the sonic sky.
Here Come the Specials also begins with a spoken sample before twisting away into loops of what could be flutes, or voices, or any other possibility coming of a laptop. A piano definitely drops in for a while, whilst brushed drums and fluttering percussions zoom around, spooking things as it ebbs and dissipates, leaving way for a female voice to echo, “Our trip’s so foul.”
She’s right, of course - this is not an album you’d want to listen to on acid. It is however one that should be listened to as Happy Ending, part Bhangra grind, part soundtrack vibe, winds the album up, via the harmonies of The Vapour Girls, another instrument to play, to play with.
Purdy’s obvious meticulous attention has meant that Fairytale Insurance only gets better with each listen, the layers of density pealing off and reassembling, never quite revealing its secrets but beckoning the listener to keep coming back.
Geoff - DELUSIONS OF ADEQUACY Rochester NY USA 4/5/04
Paris Pompor - Drum Media 1/6/04
These days, much mod- electronic music uses sampling like 'spack-filler:
patching potholes in the inventor's unimaginative shortcut to the candyman.
In contrast, producer/multi-instrumentalist Purdy weaves together vinyl clippings to create a padded, colourfully meandering path to musical bliss. Impeccably
selected layers of crack- ling turntable DNA fuse to form the fanciful character that
skips and turns through this mythical and accurately named new album. The listener is thereby led on a kaleidoscopic journey with Purdy upfront conducting the psychedelic orchestra of live and imagined players. Past the rock post and post paste-electronics, a magical world unfolds with each instrumental track.
This is truly inspiring stuff from one of the mainstays behind Sydney trio Tooth.
Paris Pompor - Drum Media 1/6/04
Purdy has been releasing music under his own name and as part of
Tooth, for some time now, Fairytale Insurance being his second full-length solo release. The Purdy sound is a mixture of sample-heavy arrangements,
covering an extraordinarily wide palette of sample sources. Sleep Well opens the album, it's music to gently coax you off to sleep so as to experience the rest of Purdy's fairytale. On The Roof Of The World lifts the tempo with reaching its
peak with what sounds like a very familiar sample. From here on in, Fairytale Insurance weaves its way through some psychedelic, dreamy sounds... much of it sounds like a dream - or acid trip - where you find yourself walking in a slightly blurred orange glow of the sun, and all along the way there are new discoveries. It's hard to describe the sound of Purdy's music because of its unique qualities, but this
is sure to please many people of many different musical persuasions.
Clark Nova - 3D World Magazine 24/5/04
Eschewing vocals for the most part, the nine tracks that make up Fairytale Insurance traverse the musical spectrum, from the gorgeous Eastern-tinged sounds of “The Secret Smile in the Camel Girl’s Eyes” to the dubby “Here Come the Specials” and all points in-between. As it drifts through its various sounds, it’s pretty much impossible not to get carried along by Fairytale Insurance.THE ELECTRIC NEWSPAPER 04/04
Fairytale Insurance is Sydney based musician / composer / producer Kevin Purdy’s second album proper. Difficult to pin down, it is a collection of flourishing, idiosyncratic textures, relaxed heartbeat pulses and spacious ambient musical themes. Tracks like ‘The Secret Smile In The Camel Girls Eyes’ lilt with happy go lucky motifs. Others like the superb ‘Sleep Well’ creep along slowly through pouring rain sound effects and reverb-drenched, melancholic guitar moans. Electronic manifestations are apparent, but do not replace musicality. An overriding sense of earthiness prevents the album from slipping into the plastic space, which is so frequently occupied by artists who release similarly assembled musical collages.
Eschewing vocals for the most part, the nine tracks that make up Fairytale Insurance traverse the musical spectrum, from the gorgeous Eastern-tinged sounds of “The Secret Smile in the Camel Girl’s Eyes” to the dubby “Here Come the Specials” and all points in-between. As it drifts through its various sounds, it’s pretty much impossible not to get carried along by Fairytale Insurance.THE ELECTRIC NEWSPAPER 04/04
Fairytale Insurance is Sydney based musician / composer / producer Kevin Purdy’s second album proper. Difficult to pin down, it is a collection of flourishing, idiosyncratic textures, relaxed heartbeat pulses and spacious ambient musical themes. Tracks like ‘The Secret Smile In The Camel Girls Eyes’ lilt with happy go lucky motifs. Others like the superb ‘Sleep Well’ creep along slowly through pouring rain sound effects and reverb-drenched, melancholic guitar moans. Electronic manifestations are apparent, but do not replace musicality. An overriding sense of earthiness prevents the album from slipping into the plastic space, which is so frequently occupied by artists who release similarly assembled musical collages.
EVAN ALEXANDER - TSUNAMI MAGAZINE QLD 04/04
The storybook titles and artwork for Purdy's second LP perfectly capture the mood inside. A treasure trove of songs illustrates why he's an integral part of post electronic outfit Tooth. A sense of childlike wonder and adventure permeate the inspired samples and instrumental collages. Electro-hippies and experimental
prog-rocking characters dance to mind-altering sounds in Purdy's forest of psychedelia. A darker underworld stirs up the vivid colours of the inventive
compositions, while contemporary aesthetics forge a distinctive musicality.
Paris Pompor - Metro - Sydney Morning Herald
Tooth – Sirens From Here To Titan - SOFT003
Sirens from here to Titan by Australian combo Tooth, manages to combine luscious and memorable melodies with splashes of pure psychedelia and beautifully constructed beats.
A recommended listen for anyone who loves to be taken on a journey with their music.
“I put this album in my
walkman a week ago and I have not taken it out. In fact, I have stopped
carrying other CDs around with me. .I cannot recommend it more
highly.Buy it.”
Rick Rutjens – Inpress (Melbourne)
Second album from the Sydney-based but astrally-projected group that includes
John Maddox on bass plus Kevin Purdy and Sir Robbo, two DJs with a depth of
music knowledge that extends years beyond the latest club 12 inches. Both play eclectic sets around the country, ranging from dub to abstract Latin fusion.
Like its DJ sets, Tooth as a band manages to find a place for all of it, with music
that sits between psychedelic jazz, warped disco, ethereal chill-out and the soundtrack to a film that's part Easy Rider, the rest space-travel documentary
(with a good section spent hanging out on the balcony of the space-station).
Stu Connolly - Australian Style
Tooth release their follow up to 1999's No Strings and the first thing you notice is they've definitely developed and cultivated a sound of their own.
The CD opens with the ocean, rolling waves, and this pretty much sets the tone for the album - rolling basslines with guitars, melodies, effects and samples carefully layered over the top. It appears the Tooth boys have been listening to the odd psychedelic record or two as elements of 60s and 70s psychedelia are scattered throughout the recording. Letters, Notes & Sketches (one of the standout tracks) has a folk element which towards changes direction into breakbeatish territory.
The album contains elements of hip hop, dub, experimentation, pop all with an underlying flair for the electronica. The diversity of sounds and simplicity of many of the melodies are really the albums strengths. One of the few Sydney "electronic" acts effectively bringing together sounds from diverse musical genres.
Anton Borsch - Album of the Week - Three D World
Cool Sydney outfit create warm textures of spatial electro-pop. Sydney duo Tooth draw on elements of dub, jazz, breaks and mutant blues disco for this engaging sonic journey. Comprising musician/ producer/DJ Kevin Purdy, DJ Sir Robbo
and ultra-talented bassist John Maddox, Tooth conjure up steamy backdrops and bathe them in tangible melodies and organic instrumentation. On "Letter, Notes and Sketches", harmonica, piano, guitar, vocals and drums share the bed with synth, sequences and samples, while "Sticky Switch" is pure space funk and
"Operation Soft Frog" massages the membranes with sheer tonal perfection. If you
enjoyed the excellent Australian experimental electronica release Freaky Loops,
make time for Tooth.
John Chalmers – Rolling Stone
“ Sirens… plays like a soundtrack for the urban traveler”
Danny Corvini – Juice Magazine
This should be subtitled The return of the boys from Never Never Land.' Some
people get Tooth straight away, for others their multi layered, textured approach is
just a bit too rich to swallow first listen. There too much of a mouthful. It took me a good few listens before Sirens really bit in but when it did.phew. And that alone says a thing or two about the album, most importantly perhaps, is that even if you don't appreciate this fully at first there's enough here to keep you coming back until it really does hook you. Now I love it. Thank Christ too cause I know Purdy and the last thing I want is him coming around and berating me. The main problem people seem to have with Tooth is they aren't easily (musically) compartmentalised. Many people file them under trance or dance but this isn't dance music. They use colours (samples, loops and programmed beats) common to dance palettes but they come up with something altogether different, the music found within Sirens is probably best illustrated by the photo in the CDs tray. It shows the three members kitted out in spacesuits walking through a blurry landscape. This is a musical trip. A long, languid atmospheric journey disturbed, as every journey is, by the occasional unexpected visitor. On Sirens the visitor appears in the form of unsettling outro's and breaks. An oceanic operetta is carried out a by a broken down carnival tune. And amidst another beautifully loping tune a sea shanty pops up. It's easy to imagine Eno listening to this and nodding happily but then it's easy to imagine Wicked Beats, Bono, Moby and the entire eighties and nineties inner city music scene sitting in the same room (it's a big room ok) and
nodding happily. Purdy told me this was better than the first album and he's right. Sirens doesn't just work, it gets better with every listen.
Neil Hunt – Revolver Magazine
“Nine tracks of bliss that no record collection should be without. This is a beautiful release.”
HR Magazine
Purdy – Kevolution SOFT001
The best electronica CD
I’ve heard in the last year…Each track takes me on an interesting
musical journey that showcases a musical knowledge, skill and sense of
adventure.”
Tim Ritchie Radio National and JJJ
Kevolution is a record of
many parts…It could be a soundtrack, it could be a bed partner, it could
be a drug, or it could be just damn good. So get out there, peasants,
and scour the stores of the land until you have a copy of Kevolution in
your sweaty little paws.
REVOLVER – Mike Gee
Kevin Purdy, one half of the sublimely smooth local outfit Tooth, is a beautiful dichotomy. He has his feet firmly planted in a rich, crimson earth, while his head is fluttering away in the stratosphere. You could easily heap lashings of praise on evolution, but the challenge is in the quest to understand the paradoxical levels of Purdy’s sound. What to some will be the perfect soundtrack to a sweaty and thumping sexual encounter, to others will simply accompany a barefoot walk through lush grass.
Kevolution takes the requisite, ethereal whine of this showboat genre to a higher plane where it becomes all-consuming, instead of a mere wail.
Standout tracks are Landing Party and Salina’s Body with Tyranikal showing how tribal beats and harmonics work so well together. Purdy’s sultry melodies languish along his baselines. Nothing sounds wonky or out of place but at the same time it all retains a coincidental and spontaneous tone. The sound tells you this is pure, local, and underground electronica, but listen a bit closer and there’s something decidedly international about the sound of Kevolution.
SMH METRO – Andrew Trimboli
I received a package the other day, marked Attn: George. This was not a particularly remarkable thing to happen to me. I receive numerous packages throughout the day. Anyway, I ripped open the package with relative gusto and a CD popped out. WOO-Hoo. My first freebie CD to review. It was a pretty exciting moment. Great I thought. Now I can be a totally critical bastard and rip apart useless untalented individuals. I can finally vent my frustration with the sometime static electronic music scene in Sydney and forever maim the potential musical career of some poor kid that just got a Pentium for Chrissie. The kind of musical hopeful that spent days surfing the web to find crax for sound forge, rebirth and other sound-building software in a desperate attempt to break into the DIY electronic home-studio music production business.
Remarkably though, the CD that I held in my hands was a masterpiece, a musical journey of mystical proportions. Kevin Purdy’s Kevolution, was not the answer to my antsy dreams that day. I was not going to be the outlet for the hyper-critical histrionic outburst that I needed. It was, in fact, to be my calming influence - a healthy and non-ingestive version of valium.
Purdy’s CD begins with a ‘call to prayer’ - a soundscape filled with the clanging of what sounds like far away church bells. Soft seductive sounds with atmospheric sweeps of an almost surreal eastern feel introduce themselves with drum beats which slowly and steadily become more forceful, subtly creating a velvety, smooth sound.
Tracks continue to surprise the listener with new musical sounds and styles making it impossible to categorise Purdy’s style. The variety of samples, such as “the music is all consuming, it’s tyrannical” are fused with the sounds of tribal adults and children chanting some kind of ritualistic song.
Purdy’s background is an interesting one. Born in Sydney, he has a lifetime of musical experience in bands, playing keyboards, drums and percussion and guitar. Post punk, dub, avante-garde, 50s R&B, electronic and dope beat have been his musical influences and the diversity of his background filters through to his current music. Purdy spent almost 10 years playing music in Melbourne where he began to combine digital technology with his musical skills. On return to Sydney he made contact with Sir Robbo (Atomic Hi Fi). This meeting resulted in the formation of Tooth, an electronic exploration into new and alternative sounds.
The release of Kevolution is a giant leap forward for Kevin Purdy’s career. Although he has a long list of releases (including Evolutionary Vibes, Vol.1, Freaky Loops vol 1 & 2), the addition of solo effort, Kevolution, to his repertoire will sky rocket this guy to musical heaven and back.
(Warning: track 5 is awesome)
Georgina Gold - Hub Magazine
Kevin Purdy, one half of local duo Tooth, unleashes his first solo album and everybody should take notice. If you’re aware of Tooth's previous material and have seen Purdy play around the traps then you'll know exactly what to expect. Very rich, smooth, flowing
basslines under layers of sampled rhythms pulled from all over the place. Perfect to sit, smoke a spliff and immerse yourself in the
music. Not really dancefloor music, has amore mellow relaxed ambient feel. Still plenty of beats but they came at you in
such a lazy subtle way you don't even notice. Samples range from pianos, acoustic gutters, flutes and diverse vocal pieces. It has a very deep texture to it (my god, is it food or music!!) and the production is of a very high standard. If your looking of CD to take the edge off after a huge bender then check this one out.
Album of the week 3D World – Lance Shaga
Sydney based musician/DJ/producer Kevin Purdy is better known as one half of local post-electronica act Tooth with Sir Robbo (or that guy behind the counter at Warped Records!) and in the same year as their astonishing debut ‘No Strings’ was released, Purdy has found the time to sneak his own debut longplayer before the (pre)millennium hit. Already drawing comparisons to British innovators Fridge and Four Tet, Kevolution accordingly displays a complex mind at work behind the layers of sound, but the end result is somewhat happier (bad word) or more positive than the others. I guess I mean you could dance to some of these tunes in a club just as much as you could sit back, pull a cone and marvel at how easy it is to get lost in the web woven by Mr Purdy, which ain't an easy feat to achieve. For instance, the opening cut Silk goes through enough changes that you'd think it was up to track three before you realise that you've yet to hit High Way Down, which uses a sample l'm sure I've heard before (call me, Kevin!). A regular delicatessen of jazzy breaks, clubby grooves, choice dialogue samples and even a
nod of the head toward all things "post-rock" (when will someone invent a new term?), this record deserves your attention; whether you like to just dance or appreciate the musicality.
Geoff Towner - Album of the Week - Revolver
Like a chain smokin' wizard (& we're not talking tobacco) Sydney producer Purdy offers a mesmerising flame & relights something exotic for music travellers, just as many of us are still spinning from the effects of the debut Tooth album of last year, which inhaled its fair share of Purdy magic. His mastery is in overlaying winding & enchanting tracks with a series of samples & well chosen classic ingredients to create a real fusion with his own
instrumentation, which then defies classification. From dreamy & trippy exotica & soulfully chugging blues, thru to chilled trip-hop styled ambience & global rhythms, the colours have been hand picked on a kaleidoscope search thru vinyl & then lovingly painted (complete with static & pops) over each & every surface, fold & spiral.
Highly recommended.
Paris Pompor - Drum Magazine
Every and I mean every track builds and metamorphs, shifts gear, codas, no treaders or one-trickers and a perfect production. The extra dimension is the journey of the CD as a whole. Not content to give us the Purdy oeuvre in 12 movements, Kevolution rolls up and down hills, opens doors, plays the piano and in an emergency moves it. The full repeat button was made for this, and on the basis of such a strong set I’m definitely a Purdy groupie”
Electroplastique (2SER-FM) – Johnathan Sykes
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