Vicki Swan & Jonny Dyer – Sleep Deprivation
WetFoot Music – Out Now
I’m no dance specialist, although there’ve been a select few dance-music-oriented albums that I’ve much enjoyed for the amount of listening pleasure that they’ve provided (whether or not they’ve also persuaded my feet off the floor in the process!). This brand new offering from the intensely versatile Swan-Dyer partnership is the product of their latest obsession – contra dance music. “What’s that then?” I hear you cry – and yes, I’d once have cried out too in ignorance. So here’s the gist: in basic terms, contra is defined as a folk dance made up of long lines (sets) of couples (with the dancers opposite each other) stretching the length of the hall, whose moves are led by a caller; although it’s sometimes given the label of Appalachian folk dance, it has mixed origins in English (and Scottish) country dance and late-17th-century French dance. The music it uses can readily encompass a variety of regional styles from all of the above, including old-time American and French-Canadian. It tends to rely on the fiddle as its core melody instrument – which here is represented principally by the nyckelharpa (that wondrous beast with both bowed and keyed drone strings, which is Vicki’s specialist instrument). Jonny provides the accompaniment, multi-tasking on several stringed and other instruments both conventional and exotic (piano, bouzouki, guitar, mandolin, citole and lyre – and I’m sure I also heard a piano accordion), while Vicki also adds flute and double bass – and on the final track, pipes – to the carefully configured texture which is masterfully mixed by maestro engineer Phil Snell.
Now a concept album of dance music isn’t something you come across every day – so Sleep Deprivation is an even more unusual creation for being just that. It comes in the form of one hour-long continuous stream of music blending from one dance to another, and its heavenly length proves indeed to keep you awake – hence the album title of course. It bears the dedication to all gigging musicians “familiar with the long drive home after a gig … trying to stay awake on this same road”, and it sure does what it says on the tin. But in the entirely positive sense. For it’s both relaxing and invigorating – not an easy combination to bring off, by any means – and makes for a truly irresistible listen which yields new and intricate layers of detail and interest on each subsequent listening visit. The rhythms sparkle and (genuinely) dance, the double bass part ducks and dives while keeping the beat solid, the lead melodies are maintained joyously and inventively. A lot is going on within the arrangements, but you never get a sense of overload. The musicianship, as always with a Swan-Dyer album, is absolutely first-rate, but the pair wear their virtuosity admirably lightly, and a friendly gentle swagger is the nearest they ever come to showing off.
Sleep Deprivation is an ostensibly seamless sequence, rather like a continuous-play ten-movement suite where each movement’s end leads straight – and (cleverly) naturally – into the next movement’s start. The music – composed and arranged exclusively by Jonny and Vicki themselves – is almost all contra-speed music of the type you would hear played at a contemporary contra dance night: the majority centring around 32-bar measures (predominantly reels), but it also includes a pair of waltzes and, to close, a chapelloise (this is a mixer dance which is fast becoming a traditional contra night finisher).
The album kicks off with a delicate, lyrical two-minute guitar prelude (Intro) to “comfortably” settle us down before almost imperceptibly ushering in the genial reel set Marvellous Meg, which gradually introduces a minor mode as the tunes progress to a darker conclusion – and some animated stepping to an encroaching piano figure, which jazzily calls forth the ensuing movement, Anastasia, a sinuous 48-bar jig set whose first tune is led by Vicki’s flute before the nyckelharpa takes over and an impish bass line appears. Once again the piano provides the bridge to the next movement, this time to fast-reel form for Lightening The Load, whose pulsing energy initially seems unstoppable but after three minutes or so takes on an almost Greek demeanour with bouzouki and stepping feet. An altogether less familiar chordal structure is deployed for the unusual (and comparatively lengthy) Medieval Contra, which brings in the ancient timbres of lyre and citole alongside the nyckelharpa as the movement’s 32-bar measure interpolates an estampie jig before it takes on the nature of a Quebecois reel to finish.
This ingeniously morphs via a reprise of the movement’s florid opening into a vigorous Caucasia Contra, whose driven rhythm betrays elements of both klezmer and Caucasus and also features an unintelligible vocal counterpoint in its later stages before yielding to the accordion and guitar for the link to the album’s only song, Jiggle The Old Bones. This catchy dance/chorus-song nominally takes the form of a 48-bar reel set. Still, it comes across more like something akin to a spirited conflagration of Dexy’s Midnight Runners and Tom Paine’s Bones with just a hint of township jive or calypso perhaps. Its rallentando piano coda settles down into 3/4 time for the two-part waltz-set The Kindness Of Thwaite. Here the nyckelharpa-and-flute partnership deftly weaves a charming melodic counterpoint around the piano line before the bass introduces a slightly syncopated minor-mode variant that introduces the album’s title set. This is a more immediately uplifting creation which could easily have served as an earworm-style finale but for the presence of the above-mentioned Driving Home Chapelloise which with its stirring pipe melody brings the whole suite to a triumphant and stylish close.
Vicki and Jonny regularly play for contra dance nights (in addition to ceilidhs and Playford-based dance nights), and Sleep Deprivation will doubtless provide the perfect marketing pitch on their merch stall at such events. But its immense musical and listening value will transcend the status of occasional gig memento. Don’t be sidetracked by its primarily dance-based rationale, but treat it as a pure – and purely enjoyable – listening experience.
Order Sleep Deprivation via their store here: http://www.swan-dyer.co.uk/store/