Lonely Whistle Music
Robin O’Brien : Ilsanjo (US,2004)**°'
Some years ago now, I discovered this very nice item by Robin O’Brien and David Mitros, “Tree of Life”, and later traced her through the net. She seems to be the wife of Don Campau, who is, besides being an underground musician, mostly known for his radioshow. Robin seemed to have little interest in getting known and recognised more widely , modestly she self-produced some (musically well conceived) releases with David, some solo worl, sometimes with Don, a variety of tapes, which were later self-reissued on CDR without any serious cover art or professional work to finalise these released objects, giving it an attention it actually deserved. I did a radioshow once with these products, designed two covers myself to compensate for this, at least for my own collection. Now some years later, I was contacted for this new release, an actual CD on a real label (as it seemed, but in fact it is a professionally looking cdr which pretty much looks like a CD), again with a deliberately “overmodest” cover. As a graphic artist, I have to say I saw more modest covers, but at least with a real graphic vision on the letters, the spaces etc. I find this lack of deeper vision on the visual work a shame, because this way it does not attract kind of attention. The album itself is a collection of songs with a certain togetherness, but also some differences in arrangement approaches. Favourites of mine are songs like “Judy”, or “St.John”. Here Robin shows the utmost, -something she realized before with her cooperations with David Mitros and in some solo works-, all aspects of a “heavenly voice”. With accompanying acoustic or strummed guitar, Robin here adds lots of voice arrangements on such songs, varying from whispers to airy backing vocals. It is something of a similar approach which other people might know from another voice, Linda Perhacs -who more than luckily received a bit more attention with her reissue-, although the last singer experimented with such arrangements much more as something that worked on its own too. What I always found a bit odd was that the solo music of Don is much harsher underground music with more one-dimensional straightness in performing. He participated here in several tracks. One contribution on two tracks is with a rhythm box, which is luckily mixed / produced well with the music by Robin & Mark Benanti. On another track he plays in a very fine way acoustic guitar. Although all tracks are fine, and good enough, I personally think when Robin goes deeper into subtle territories and adds more acoustic arrangements her talent appeal and voice comes over best. The three following tracks are this way : “Blue Light”, arranged with extra bass, oboe and keyboards, with again this wonderful dreamy factor, followed by “Appleseed” and “Apples”, with voice, slightly echoed guitar, oboe, whistle.
Luxotone Rec. Robin O’Brien : Eye and Storm (US,2008)*° ???
review will be added soon
