I always enjoy it when a label that’s known for a very specific type of music veers into what, for them, might be considered leftfield, perhaps even the avant garde. Warp did so with the late Nick Talbot’s Gravehurst project, and Mo Wax with South.
Ninja Tune, one of the labels most synonymous with electronic music and founded by the duo Coldcut in 1990, also likes to step outside its main focus while remaining centred on its original motivations for being. Artists such as Fink have shown that even though their roots may have been in genres such as jungle or experimental electronica, as they mature as artists and their focus shifts, the label continues to support them. The label, via its Counter Records imprint, was also responsible for bringing a folktronica-style artist to my attention back in 2011: Jono McCleery.
I’d heard Jono’s self-funded debut while working in the advertising industry. Music was a huge part of my agency life and with a wide range of creative people around it it’s inevitable that different music gets shared or played in the studio late at night. Jono’s Darkest Light was one of those albums in 2008.
Fast forward a few years and I found myself on week-long creative sprint in the French Alps, off-season and in a chalet with about 12 others. My art director and I would often work to music, each of us playing an album the other may not have heard. I’d been gifted an early release copy of Jono’s album from one of the client services team whose childhood friend was Simon Green, better known by the moniker, Bonobo. This was an album called There Is, which was due for release a few months later. I’d not had a chance to listen to it, but took a chance that it would be ideal to work to.
It wasn’t. The reason was the best reason: this was an album that deserved to be listened to actively. And so we did. For almost an hour. It served as a reflexive exercise and ignited a love for Jono’s music that continues to this day.
It has electronic elements, including some glitchy beats, but front and centre is Jono’s gentle guitar playing and outstanding voice. It always reminds me of those jazz-inflected drum and bass tracks on chill out albums of the 90s. Opener, Fears, has that laid back, smoky club feel. Plucked chords against a snapped beat and double bass. And then Jono’s voice, all buttery and smooth, note perfect but emotionally charged and vulnerable.
McCleery uses his voice as an instrument. As the drums pick up, the strings build (bringing to mind Scott Walker), so he does what Robert Plant was able to do in the early days of Led Zeppelin – taking his voice beyond performance and words. And yet there is no warbling fanfare so beloved of modern day singers. It’s understated yet without it the song could be lacking. I’m always astonished by the fact that McCleery was deaf for the first five years of his life. It’s pure conjecture on my part, but I find myself wondering if he didn’t hear voices not as communication devices but as a melody? This isn’t just ad libbing, it’s texture.
Second song, Garden, feels the most commercial song on the album, with its synth backdrop and upbeat four-four beat, and yet that vulnerability that Jono brings to each song keeps it grounded in its jazz-folk electronica world and away from pop. Because, even when Jono does pop he takes the song to a new place, an unexpected place.
McCleery has form when it comes to covers. Across his entire career, he has recorded songs by other artists. Without fail they live up to, and in some cases transcend, the original. On There Is, that cover song is Wonderful Life which was originally recorded and released in 1987 by BLACK. I loved the original song, but McCleery’s version seems to reduce its bleakness and instead make it a more sensitive record. And that ability to convey darker emotions without the need to resort to desolation and despair, is a balancing act that he has down to a fine art. Nowhere is this demonstrated that on the track, It’s All. It feels like a lament, which could have slipped into something quite self-indulgent in the wrong hands.
Folk legend Vashti Bunyan makes an appearance on the song, Only. It’s a gentle lullaby of a song, played on piano and guitar, with searing strings that cut through behind the two singers adding a discordance and a shadow of sadness. I think it gives off the vibe I get from the album as a whole – that there is a sense of loss accompanying the songs. Although I don’t feel sad when I listen to the album, quite the opposite in fact. I find it soothing, like a balm on sunburn.
I’ve found solace in listening to to repeatedly as I write this piece, particularly against the backdrop of what’s happening around the world.
Raise Me, is like a softened gospel track. McCleery backs himself with his voice across the minute-long track. And then, finally, we’re delivered the penultimate song (on the original release), The Gymnopedist, with its film score qualities and more use of that exquisite voice as a backing instrument as the track opens into what appears to be an instrumental. The way it builds in layers at its halfway point is nothing short of astonishing to my ears you’re waiting in anticipation for the lyrics, which never come. It’s the perfect way to introduce the repetitive hypnotism of the stanzas sung in the final song on the album, She Moves.
There’s a meditative state this album puts me in. I feel relaxed, energised and yet also infused in some way with a pain and loss that is inherently human. In my head, credits roll. This is a film soundtrack without the visuals, which the listener provides themselves. Perhaps that happens to everyone with all their music choices. For me, this is the album that delivers sharp imagery, emotions and a longing for something that I can’t quite articulate to myself. Which means, all that’s left for me to do is play it again.
For reasons unknown, the album is not available on vinyl. Hopefully someone at Ninja Tune is sorting that out, or if the rights belong to Jono he’s willing to consider doing it himself. The following YouTube playlist contains all the album tracks and a bonus, plus an advertisement I cannot remove. Ignore that, or better still buy the album on Jono’s Bandcamp.
BONUS CONTENT
It’s worth stepping aside here to talk about McCleery’s cover of Ingenue by Thom Yorke (recorded under the name, Atoms For Peace). The only time I’ve heard this song done better is when Thom performed it live on the Jonathan Ross Show on the piano. Both versions are astonishing pieces of art.