CD reviews: Daniel Johns, Pinchgut Opera, Okland, Lie and Haaland

R&B
Daniel JohnsAERIAL LOVE EP(EMI)
★★★★

A firm piano presages a voice trembling at the edges over slow, deep-set bass drum: "I find it hard to breath the truth." He sends a falsetto into the sky, an exultant but anxious reach out: "Now I dance to my own beat". Drops back to plead a case: "... we were never strangers", before one more burst of anxiety drifts away in a mini choir that doesn't quite wipe the tension. Nice. Even before you get to his pretty fabulous lover's-rhythm title track and single, with its sensual groove and firm pulse, the opening track of Daniel Johns' EP has cleared the decks of residual Silverchair expectations. There's going to be grumbling about the way Surrender, with its blips, claps and rolling rhythm under soul crooning, puts Johns far closer to James Blake than any Newcastle boy is meant to venture. There'll be some bitching over how Late Night Drive isn't really that far from a certain J. Timberlake in ballad mode. And we will care not a wit if the coming album fulfils the promise of this EP.
Bernard Zuel

Classical
Antonio SalieriTHE CHIMNEY SWEEPPINCHGUT OPERA★★★★

Sydney's pocket rocket opera company Pinchgut continues its run of exemplary productions of little-known early works with this lively farce by the Viennese contemporary of Mozart, Antonio Salieri. Apparently not performed for the best part of two centuries, it is a witty and deft though somewhat slight singspiel – arias and ensembles punctuated by spoken text which is not included, regrettably. It tells of an amorous chimney sweep who poses as an Italian singing teacher to get money from his employers and their suitors so he can marry a fellow servant. As so often with Pinchgut, the various parts, all strong, meld into a particularly felicitous whole. The cast is uniformly pleasing but especially the women – Alexandra Oomens, Amelia Farrugia and the extremely promising Janet Todd – while the sensitive and alert Erin Helyard draws idiomatic playing from the excellent Orchestra of the Antipodes. The recording is from the live production last July, and one can hear what fun cast and audience are having. Please, Pinchgut, for your non-Sydney admirers, add a DVD to the CD option.
Barney Zwartz

Psychedelic Drone Rock
Okland/Lie/HaalandLUMEN DRONES(ECM)
★★★½

You cannot escape your environment, you can only choose to ignore it. Or, like Norwegians Nils Okland, Per Steinar Lie and Orjand Haaland, you can revel in it and render the serenity of the frozen landscapes, the ferocious blasts of wind and even the delicacy of a snowflake in sound. Okland plays hardanger, the eerie-sounding fretted Norwegian fiddle, and Lie and Haaland (from rock band The Low Frequency In Stereo) are on guitar and drums, respectively. The instrumentation, therefore, is essentially the same as that of Dirty Three, and the similarities extend to the sophisticated improvising skills over simple underpinnings and the tendency to work up avalanches of energy. The Dirty Three may be broader in scope, but this trio's music is brilliant in its brooding intensity and moody evocations. They nominate such bands as The Doors and Sonic Youth as precursors, but are capable of building towards a towering majesty that is all their own. Play it softly for a chilling ambience, or turn it up and feel the cold creep deep into your bones.
John Shand