The Cinematic Orchestra: 'Everyday'
May 10th, 2002 by freddie96
B I G C H I L L R E C O R D O F T H E W E E K
13/05/02
THE CINEMATIC ORCHESTRA
Everyday
(Ninja Tune)
This one’s been a long time coming. Decades, in fact. As anyone who has been immersed in the world of chill can’t have failed to notice, an extraordinary convergence of musical styles is happening just now, fuelled by an ever deepening re-appraisal of our shared musical heritage. We’ve had Zero 7’s take on early 70s soul and, more recently, reggae; Fila Brazillia giving us modern spiritual; and innumerable other acts from virtually every other corner of the music world reinventing the music formerly known as jazz – in spirit and principle if not form.
It’s an intensely exciting time for sonic explorers and seekers. Each benchmark album like ‘Simple Things’ or ‘Jump Leads’ (or whatever has been rinsing your ears) has seemed like another stage in a journey simultaneously stretching back into the deepest riches of our musical heritage and taking us forward into the kind of future that we crave… a world in which all the boundaries and categories that have traditionally divided people are melted down and re-fused together through the sheer emotive power of music.
Such, at least, is the power of this particular music that it can conjure up such a dream on a dull and cloudy London day. It has a lot to do with hearing Fontella Bass (of ‘Rescue Me’ fame) sing ‘Evolution’ and ‘All That You Give’. What else is that if not cause for hope? A good deal has already been made of her contribution to this album – and deservedly so – but there are even deeper riches to be found on ‘Everyday’, such as ‘All Things To All Men’, a top drawer Roots Manuva collaboration, and the ten-minute long ‘Burnout’ (three of the best tracks on ‘Everyday’ are of this length). Starting slowly and gently, it builds and builds in a way that commands deep attention. If you like nothing better than to sit back with a long and detailed Miles Davis track, this will really rock your world.
Certainly, for me, ‘Everyday’ repeatedly conjures up the spirit of the late and great Miles. Like Miles at his most visionary – and leisurely – the Cinematic Orchestra seem to explore the notion of music as an imaginary time and space, both outside of temporal reality and as its ultimate realisation. Music of this ilk evokes an absence as well as a super-abundance of time and space: it is to this imaginary state of existence – simultaneously a poetic rewriting of our most ancient myths of union and immortality and an informed engagement with the realities of the present – that so much new music is directed. Which is one reason why chill out is proving such fertile territory – it is nothing if not dreamy.
Whatever you call this music (and let’s not forget David Toop’s trenchant dismissal of all ‘those separations which lay claim to the creation of order and sense but actually serve business interests’), experimental, questioning musicians have always been intensely visionary in their quest to express, and bring into being, alternative perceptual states. You could say we need them more than ever….
In the meantime, I defy you to listen to this album and not have your world temporarily re-shaped.
Freddie B.
