Trees I

Gabriel Le Mar’s been on a roll. Not content to recast techno through his simmering dub vernacular to yield ever more bracing results, he manages to construct records of both gorgeous accessibility and wholly entrancing affect. Among Trees I Want To Live finds him returning to Carpe Sonum armed with his characteristic brimstone and brio. Back in the 90s, a track sporting the seductive pulsations of “Regenerative” would have been classified as armchair techno; genre tokenisms aside, it is instead a sterling five minutes of neon throb and quacking guitar process that easily casts a spell on the dancefloor and home listening space alike…

John Williams composed The Five Sacred Trees for Judith LeClair, the principal bassoonist of the New York Philharmonic in 1995, to honor the orchestra's 150th anniversary. The first performance was given by LeClair and the New York Philharmonic under Kurt Masur on April 12 of that year. The orchestra consists of three flutes and piccolo, two oboes and English horn, two clarinets and bass clarinet, two bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba, timpani, harp, piano, celesta, and strings. Performance time is approximately 26 minutes. Inspiration for the work also comes from the writings of British poet and novelist Robert Graves.

A few years into the British folk-rock boom, came along a band called the Trees, that got slagged off by the mindless British weekly press as Fairport Convention sound-alike. If those so-called journalist had actually listened, they might have seen their mistake as the Trees were a lot more like the fantastically fabulous The Pentangle but only even more progressive. True the dual guitarist and female singer was a sort of blueprint (almost cliché) for bands of those days into folk-rock, but here the musical interplay got uncommon space to develop and the numbers frequently grew longer in time, something rare in the genre and only followed by Comus. But that SMBWMP (stupid mindless British weekly music press) would keep on deriding this band that folded after two excellent but unsuccessful albums.
The Trees are recommended to everyone wanted to investigate the folkish side of progressive rock and its acoustic side.