Data Cut

Includes all the band's official releases in replica cardboard sleeves, a cd with live tracks and a cd that compiles singles, b-sides, demos outtakes and other rarities.

Intimacy, intensity, passion this album explores the unfamiliar idea that fifteenth-century songs might cause us to sigh, weep, or laugh out loud. In bringing to life a world in which crying in public was not just acceptable but required, we have to take seriously the crushing despair of a line like My only sorrow is that I am not dead, or the undisguised sarcasm of This is how she chopped and cooked me up. In Johannes Ockeghem's (d. 1497) roughly two-dozen songs we find not only unparalleled compositional prowess, but feelings that range from happiness to loss, anger to despair, and bitterness to merriment. The album's all-vocal, fully texted, close-mic'd performances are rooted in a flexible, full-blooded vocal technique that aims to capture the music's technical brilliance and emotional depth.

What did it mean for Guillaume Du Fay (ca. 1397-1474), chameleon-like expert in every musical genre of his day, to compose four settings of the Mass Ordinary toward the end of his life? Looking back from the vantage point of the next generation, when the polyphonic mass reigned supreme, it might be tempting to interpret these works as a self-conscious summa of Du Fay’s career – an achievement akin to Haydn’s London Symphonies or Beethoven’s late string quartets. On a purely musical level these comparisons are apt. Each mass stakes out unique musical terrain; they are often strikingly experimental; and the entire set is shimmeringly beautiful from beginning to end, revealing a composer at the height of his powers.

Cut Capers are a 9-piece Bristol band whose energetic live performance and infectious sound have won them a cult following on the British festival scene. Mixing a swinging vintage-style brass section (think Caro Emerald) with funk, soul and hip-hop. Like all the best bands, (and many of those on Freshly Squeezed Music) their sound is hard to pin down but comparisons have been made to “Madness, The Streets and Lily Allen” among many others (The Bristol Magazine). Cut Capers have established themselves as go-to festival favourites, playing headline shows and main stage performances at some of the UK’s biggest festivals including Glastonbury Festival (official) and Boomtown Fair.