COMPOSERS: Billy Jenkins
LABELS: Voice of the People
WORKS: Brilliant, Expensive Equipment, Fat People, The Blues, Sade's Lips, Johnny Cash, Discoboats at Two O'Clock, Cooking Oil, Donkey Droppings, Elvis Presley
PERFORMER: Billy Jenkins
CATALOGUE NO: VOCD 921
Billy Jenkins has been purveying his unique brand of obliquely satirical commentary on the pretensions of both improvised music and commercial pop for nearly a decade. This CD is an eight-year retrospective, featuring Jenkins’s manic, scrabbling guitar in a variety of his Voice of God Collectives.
Given that musical bases touched range from light funk through blues and country to heavy metal, filtered through jazz improvisation and Jenkins’s characteristic affectionate irreverence, the result is surprisingly homogeneous and skilfully musical – even upliftingly exuberant, especially when ex-Loose Tubes saxophonist Iain Ballamy is involved. The perfect antidote to winebar-friendly designer jazz. Chris Parker