Shortly after finishing “Everyday,” a piece of music which achieved great critical and commercial success (selling over 100,000 units) Jason Swinscoe relocated from East London to Paris. Here he began work on the instrumentals which would form the basis of his new record – more moods than finished tracks, a series of sketches or diagrams of directions to follow.
Having completed a rough version by early 2005, he gave this to a friend who disappeared for 3 weeks and came back with short story scripts in which each scene represented a story of a different time in life, expressing the emotions which underpin the journey from birth to death. Jason then took this and worked some more on the tracks, and in turn gave this back to his scriptwriter, the two aspects of the project developing alongside one another. Gradually, Swinscoe recruited suitable vocalists for the atmospheres and themes he wanted to deal with. The remarkable Fontella Bass, who is now sadly in frail health, is the woman behind both legendary soul number “Rescue Me” as well as some of the Art Ensemble of Chicago's finest moments, had worked on “Everyday” and was an obvious choice to voice the parts of the elderly protagonist that Swinscoe envisaged. Mercury-nominated Lou Rhodes is not only a fantastic singer but a young mother and so perfect for the “mid-life” singer. The as-yet unheralded Patrick Watson, a remarkable vocalist from Montreal, became the youngest of the trio. Swinscoe, now based in New York, then filled out the arrangments with the band and assistance from his old collaborator, bassist Phil France. As a final part of the process, renowned New York photographer Maya Hayuk was commissioned to take 11 pictures to represent each of the scenes/tracks. These pictures, scenes where the characters are missing or abstracted or metaphoric, would once again feed back into world of the soundtrack for a missing film. These images relate to individual moments and the overall at the same time, “leaving the spaces as empty as possible was paramount” so the viewer/listener can fill them, finish them or re interpret them as they see fit. Dealing with themes of loss and love – and in itself representing a kind of absence – “Ma Fleur” is fertile ground for Swinscoe's brand of music-making, for while people have talked about what he does in terms of jazz, the truth is that the basis of his music has always been in raw emotion. From the achingly beautiful opener “To Build A Home” to the finale, “Time And Space,” this is an album which reaches for and finds a truth and honesty far beyond what we would normally expect from such a record, but without losing any of the accessibility which made TCO popular in the first place. If the mood is melancholy, Swinscoe and the musicians he works with manage to make it an ultimately uplifting experience, perhaps in the end more about the love you find than the love you lose…
Review:
For the true follow-up to 2002's Every Day – since 2003's Man with a
Movie Camera soundtrack had actually been recorded four years earlier – J.
Swinscoe & co.'s Cinematic Orchestra produced another soundtrack, this one
virtually invisible. Not long after Every Day's release, Swinscoe began writing
music for another Cinematic LP, but in another direction from where he'd gone
previously. This was a series of quiet, contemplative instrumentals, with Rhodes
keyboards and reedy clarinets, simply begging for a narrative (call them
orchestrations for cinema). With scripts for each supplied by a friend – each
track got its own story, together comprising different scenes from a single
life – and a series of unpeopled photographs supplied by Maya Hayuk,
Cinematic Orchestra had the narrative they needed for their invisible
soundtrack. (Added vocals from Fontella Bass, Lou Rhodes, and Patrick Watson
represent the same person at different ages.) The results form an intensely
affecting record, but one whose monochromatic format unfortunately serves no
large purpose; when every song attempts to become a mini-masterpiece of
melodrama, patience grows thin. Swinscoe tells us that he wanted to record an
album where “leaving the spaces as empty as possible was paramount,” but he
can hardly complain if we choose to leave him the space to himself. [A U.K.
version of the album was also released.]
All Music Guide – John Bush