NICK PYNN : LATEST CD :

The Colours Of The Night

 

- SomanydynamoS - Intro/Receiving - Cala Azzurro - A Long Way Down (Sydney, Floor 28)
- Into Alsace - Opaque - Where North Falls - Michigan Sleeping - The Fishes’ Lament - YanKel - Talking with the Enemy - A Defaced Edge - Breakwater - Reprise

Nick Pynn: violins, violas, acoustic guitar, lap dulcimer, mandocello, mandobass, tiple, oud, ukulele, piano, percussion, spanners, coathanger, voice and theremin with:

Adam Bushell: glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba, timpani, cymbals.
Jane Bom-Bane: voice.
BJ Cole: pedal steel guitar.
Sean C Davis: helicon.
Pete Davison: trumpet.
Bela Emerson: cellos.
John Franchi: flutes, saxophones, clarinet and piccolo.
Ian Glen: bassoon.
Eddie Myer: double bass.
Dominic Nunns: french horn.
Gill Scheuer: oboe, cor anglais.
Tim Wade: trombones.

Cover pastel by Tom Walker.

Eight tracks are performed by an orchestra whose members haven’t yet met. Twelve musicians who happened to stop by at Bom-Bane’s in Brighton were asked to record their instrument’s parts in Nick’s studio above the cafe. The compositions, collectively named ‘What the Moon Showed me’, share a lunar thread embracing night journeys, childhood memories, dreams and insomnia. The six non-orchestral tracks feature smaller ensemble pieces with experimental, electro-acoustic and folk themes.

In August 2009 Nick returned from another successful Edinburgh Fringe performing a show which was very warmly received, and featured tracks from the latest album. Below are some live reviews of the show.

Live Reviews :

Colours of the Night, Inlingua Edinburgh
Star rating: ****
Rob Adams The Glasgow Herald

Nick Pynn seems doomed to be forever performing up several flights of stairs in a room that holds barely thirty people who will all go away wondering why Pynn isn't playing in a much bigger venue.

It's happening again as Pynn, a man for whom multi-tasking comes as second nature, conjures up multi-tracked-in-situ marvels where massed dulcimers hum palindromic folk dances, plays fiddle tunes to foot piano accompaniment that make their inspiration - toothache - feel almost desirable, and unleashes his home-made cocolele (a hybrid of coconut shell and ukulele fingerboard) on a work of infinite charm.

Every piece has a story behind it, be it sleeplessness in Detroit, the customer at Pynn and partner Jane's Brighton café who bequeathed Pynn an overcoat with treasure in its pockets, or the Eastern European gypsy band who, allegedly, diddled Pynn out of his pen at an autograph-signing session.

Whether this is true or not, the resulting concoction of typewriter keys, carriage return, instantly recorded mandocello rhythm and real time fiddle is as eloquent a letter of complaint, albeit too pretty to convey real indignation, as you'll hear this Fringe.

Colours of the Night:
tw rating 4/5 Rhys Pierce Three Weeks

Nick Pynn performs solo, but displays the bizarre and wonderful talent of becoming an entire orchestra. Through a combination of technological trickery and sheer musical expertise the multi-instrumentalist serves up thundering contemporary folk: by building up dense layers of looped samples, bolstered by the rumble of a foot-pedal base, Pynn can change from one string instrument to the next mid-song. The effect is almost mathematically logical but still manages to evoke a sense of raw spontaneity, especially tangible with the use of a typewriter for rhythm and a self-made ukulele crafted from a coconut. According to Pynn, once on a visit to Italy the summer heat caused his violin to explode, and somehow in his performances the same thing seems all too possible.

Nick Pynn: Colours of the Night
Inlingua****
David Chadderton British Theatre Guide

In a tiny converted classroom in a language school at the top of a steep staircase on Hanover Street, multi-instrumentalist Nick Pynn fills a large part of the room with his amazing collection of stringed instruments, some of which he has made himself.

Pynn plays a wide range of instruments including violin, viola, ukulele, glockenspiel, typewriter and one of his own instruments made from a coconut he has called a cocolele, which he has even electrified. He builds up most of his pieces, each introduced by a funny story, by playing sections into a sampler and looping them then playing other instruments over the top. The result is an amazing sound from this accomplished and imaginative musician who sits in the corner of the room alone creating the sound of a whole band by himself.

Inlingua is a little hidden away despite being in the heart of Edinburgh on Hanover Street, but it is worth seeking out and climbing the stairs to be greeted with a glass of wine and this hidden gem of a show.

Available from Amazon link : www.amazon.co.uk/Colours-Night-One-At-Time-Orchestra

CD Reviews

November 15, 2009
NICK PYNN: The Colours of the Night (Roundhill RHLCD09).
Stewart Lee - The Sunday Times.
****
On his mini masterpiece Afterplanesman, Nick Pynn intertwined loops of self-made stringed instruments to create intricate, unpredictable compositions humanised by the acoustic textures of folk music. His follow-up finds him multilayering a dozen guest musicians, one by one, in the attic of his Brighton cafe. Pynn purists might miss the unadorned simplicity of his signature sounds, but Cala Azzurro’s light-fingered pizzicato shines out, A Long Way Down is a vertigo-inducing cello scrape, Yankel fabricates an authentically Yiddish-sounding fiddle lament, and Breakwater, a duet for cello and analogue answerphone feedback that is one of Pynn’s finest moments, points a new path forwards.

 

NICK PYNN: The Colours of the Night (Roundhill RHLCD09).
Alan Clayson - Rock 'n' Reel.
****
As much at ease accompanying Steve Harley as B*witched, this most gifted multi-instrumentalist has worked more recently with Arthur Brown and the similarly remarkable Jane Bom-Bane. Indeed, the latter intones 'The Fishes' Lament', one of only two vocal items on this inspiring fourteen-track collection by Nick with his One At A Time Orchestra - while B.J. Cole guests on pedal steel in the evocation of impending sunrise that is 'Michigan Sleeping'. Pynn, however, doesn't need association with the famous to enhance a deserved cult celebrity.

The uninitiated might be tempted to shoehorn this sixth solo album into a space bordered by Moondog, The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Lumpy Gravy-Uncle Meat-period Zappa and even Miklos Rozsa (soundtracks to Ben Hur, El Cid et al). Yet while shadowy links surface frequently enough, Pynn remains one of the only true practitioners of a form of music that is either rock 'n' roll at its most subtle or a genre that begs an entirely new classification. Moreover, aided by a delightful accessibility and succinctness, The Colours Of The Night is a disc you'll consume simply because you like it rather than as an antidote to pleasure on the principal that the more arduous the effort needed to appraise it, the more 'artistic' it is.

 

From 'The Sound Projector' website :
NICK PYNN: The Colours of the Night (Roundhill RHLCD09).
Ed Pinsent.
One of the nice surprises from last Autumn was Nick Pynn’s The Colours Of The Night, an instrumental CD of compositions by Pynn and played by The One At A Time Orchestra, a small chamber ensemble which includes the wonderful Bela Emerson among its ranks. Very difficult to categorise this lively and warm lyrical music, which seems to embrace all aspects of popular classics, English revivalist folk and folk-rock music (in particular the work of John Renbourn, and Ashley Hutchings), light jazz, the arrangements for Pet Sounds, and many other things – but that list simply gets in the way of appreciating Pynn’s originality.

You can gather however that atonality and 12-tone dissonances are the last thing on his mind as he paints these evocative sound pictures with their equally evocative titles. One of the most impressive aspects of this record is that the players didn’t actually meet up, but added their contributions ‘one at a time’ by means of overdubbing (most of the basic foundation had already been recorded by multi-instrumentalist Pynn) and did so in the composer’s studio which is situated above a little cafe in Brighton. A simply gorgeous record results.

 

The Organ Magazine :
NICK PYNN: The Colours of the Night (Roundhill RHLCD09).
"Nick Pynn performs solo, but displays the bizarre and wonderful talent of becoming an entire orchestra” so reads the press release for his recent live shows. The multi-instrumentalist serves a rather fine, very English sounding, set of rather delicate contemporary classical folk tunes. Dense layers of looped samples dance with very organic strings, violins, medieval richness, orchestral refinement, light-footed delights, classical twists. Typewriters for rhythm and a self made ukulele crafted from a coconut, but this does sound delightfully traditional and almost other-worldly. All rather relaxing and indeed classically beautiful in a relaxed sunny orchestral folk kind of way.

 

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