Eyeless In Gaza
Plague of Years (songs and instrumentals 1980-2006)
(Sub Rosa SR 263, October 15 2006, Cd)
Review 1
by Rob Young (?) (The Wire, January 2007)
Eyeless In Gaza
Summer Salt And Subway Sun
AMBIVALENT SCALE CD
Plague of Years : Songs And Instrumentals 1980-2006
SUB ROSA CD
Martyn Bates
Your Jewled Footsteps :Solo And Collaboration Works 1979-2005
SUB ROSA CD
Even before one listens to the music within, the artwork of the two Sub Rosa compilations gives a visual insight into Martyn Bates’s muse. Photographs of nondescript houses in his hometown of Nuneaton, sitting under grey skies, are juxtaposed with rain-spattered windows, flame red sunsets and lush fields, neatly illustrating a sense of an otherness on the edge of the everyday that has run through Bates’ lyrics and music from the very first.
For a time in the early 80’s Eyeless in Gaza, the duo of Bates and Pete Becker, appeared to be raincoat-clad popsters with severe haircuts – a notion that soon evaporated. Their music was melodic, but there was intensity about it. Plague of Years illustrates how Bates remarkable voice has developed in character and poise from these early untrammelled outpourings of yells and yodels where syllables were chewed up or elongated to the point of incomprehensibility.
Eyeless in Gaza soon became more lyrical, with Bates’ lyrics capturing transience, loss, the subtleties of sensation and a pantheistic awe at the natural world. It’s unsurprising, then, that he has enjoyed an overlap with the folk tradition. Although ‘She Moves Thru The Fair’ (from 1985) has so much reverb it sounds like it was recorded in a cave (in a garage, actually –Ed.), it is beautifully sung. Bates’s exploration of folk forms is more in evidence on Your Jewled Footsteps. Although his earliest solo work is almost interchangeable with Eyeless In Gaza’s, ‘90’s collaborations with Max Eastley (‘Cherry Tree Carol’) and Mick Harris (‘Cruel Mother’, from their Murder Ballads album) are more spectral, with his voice soaring through the music’s space.
Although Eyeless in Gaza’s work has a tendency to slip under the radar, its quality has been remarkable consistent. Bates still enjoys a potent musical relationship with Becker and the brand new album Summer Salt And Subway Sun is fresh and vital, as good as anything they’ve done before. A mix of drifting ambiance, churning guitars and layered sonics, it ranges from the sparse piano and voice of ‘Mixed Choir’ to the dark edged instrumental ‘Whitening Rays’. According to Bates, this album represents a conscious sideways move to prevent them being lumped in with any of the new folk fads. But let’s also hope that it doesn’t estrange them further from the attention they so obviously deserve.
Review 2
by Céline Rémy (Les inrockuptibles, 22 janvier 2007)
Alors que, dans le folk cosmique, il est aujourd’hui de bon ton de citer sans relâche l’influence de Talk Talk, Robert Wyatt ou The Legendary Pink Dots, on a l’impression que le nom épineux d’Eyeless In Gaza continue d’érafler les grandes bouches, de filer entre les doigts des encyclopédistes et blogueurs. Une ahurissante hérésie que tentera de combler cette anthologie de plus de vingt-cinq années de carrière discrète mais déterminante.
Car ils étaient peu nombreux, dans l’agitation post-punk, ceux capables d’ouvrir des ponts vers le folk psychédélique, d’oser des chansons aussi désertes et arides – et pourtant habitées d’un lyrisme foudroyant – que celles d’albums-jalons, comme Photographs as Memories. Il y avait du Nico dans ces chants d’éther, cette mélancolie autoritaire, ces morceaux aux formes fuyantes, évasives, plus incantations que chansons. Et les morceaux ‘John of Patmos’ ou ‘Rose Petal Knot’ pourraient toujours, un quart de siècle plus tard, enseigner un peu de beauté et de liberté à beaucoup de jeunes chercheurs du free-folk.
Review 3
by Paolo Bertoni (Blow Up # 104) (Italian)
