What you say
No-one has reviewed Help The Over Dog by Flake Brown yet.
What we say
 This record left our Brett feeling happy.
It's awful when you've been to the kebab shop and the next day you curl out some brown flakes. It'd be even worse if you looked down afterwards and saw Flake Brown staring back at you with his little folky face and his giant marrow fingers bleeding profusely from playing his 10p guitar. 'Help the Overdog' is a collection of mental ramblings backed solely by his wee guitar, indebted to all sorts of old-school influences but with a modern day (occasionally sinister) weirdness to the lyrics, not to mention the fairly manic and nuts singing style he slips into every now and again. I guess I might've just described that whole 'freak folk' thing but since I didn't want to use that phrase there we got to go the scenic route. He's certainly a talented guy at doing that charmingly wonky Django-style guitar stuff. We reckon it sounds quite like David Thomas Broughton so if you're into all that kind of business this'll be well up your street.
What the label says:
‘Help The Overdog’ is the debut album from East Sussex based Tony Ramsay, performing under his pseudonym of Flake Brown. The album consists of fifteen tracks of stripped bare finger picked folk ramblings, with Flake’s signature voice present on all but the instrumental closing track.
Flake derives his music from many a musical genre and many influential names come to mind when describing his sound; the Gypsy Jazz of legend Django Reinhardt, the bohemian psyche folk flare of The Incredible String Band’s Robin Williamson, the raw early recordings of 1920’s blues/ragtime guitarist Blind Blake and traditional Celtic guitar style and Bardic story telling that has survived in Britain through out the centuries.
The songs on ‘Help the Overdog’ are full of riddle like tales and hallucinogenic imagery that transcend the listener to wondrous (if not slightly sinister) places full of lucid dream like characters and storybook events. Surreal these tales may be but within them there is substance and depth and, along with the eccentric flare, Flake merges psychology and religion, historic and literary characters and the basics of love, death and everyday life occurrences into his well structured songs.
The guitar style used by Flake contains elements of Spanish, Celtic and Classical nylon stringed techniques played in a wild, free and sometimes off kilter approach, not bound to any rigid format, but still full of precision, grace and intricacy. Riding on the guitar lines Flakes unique voice is sometimes high and meandering before falling down into a dark, rich, muddy warmth to resonate deeply for a while; the piercing cry of a bird of pray, the guttural call of a rutting stag.
‘Help The Overdog‘ ushers in the second offering from Autumn Ferment Records with a truly unique release and one that will appeal to many different ears.
|
|
Other customers buying this also bought:
Beaterblocker by Marsen Jules, Marissa Nadler, Various
(CD, £3.99)
|
