I don’t often buy compilation albums, and this is roughly speaking one — and, in fact, I nearly didn’t buy it. I listened to it when it came out last November, obviously, and at the time I passed it over. I think I rather sniffily opined that it didn’t cohere as an album. Coming back to it some time later, I realized that I’d rather overlooked a more important factor: a lot of the music here is stunningly good.
Jeck died back in 2022, and this record appears to be part tribute, part collection of unfinished works, the latter mostly collaborations now finished by the collaborators. And what a role-call that is: Fennesz, Gavin Bryars, Chris Watson, Claire M Singer, Faith Coloccia, David Sylvian, and Hildur Guðnadóttir are all much-loved names around these parts. And there were some impressive new finds for me in Rosy Parlane, Cris Cheek, and Chandra Shukla. Well done to Touch for using their contact book well — though, such is the regard in which Jeck was surely held, I imagine that most were glad to take part.
It’s hard to pick highlights, to be honest. The crackly vinyl and cut-up vocal loops of the Jeck–Bryars numbers are just imperiously done. Watson’s found sound number is deeply absorbing. The elegant melodic ambient of the Parlane is breathtakingly good. Cheek’s collage is wonderfully sinister. The Coloccia is shimmeringly wonderful (and, incidentally, I think that Stardust was cruelly underrated). We mustn’t overlook the one solo Jeck number, with its crackles and its cascading chimes and its mournful violin loop and its wobbly turnatablistic flourishes. Sylvian reading Emily Dickinson’s I Measure Every Grief I Meet over a suitably sombre cello part from the mighty Guðnadóttir is rather moving. The two Jeck–Singer sketches are every bit as magical as you’d hope, especially second, where Singer’s organ drone combines with Jeck’s atmospheric flourishes to create something truly mesmerizing — and makes me sad we’ll never get to find out what might have happened if this partnership hadn’t been sawn off so early. Shukla’s track is called The Ark Is Closed, I assume in reference to Jeck’s An Ark For The Listener, and is a fitting epitaph.
And what of my previous quibble about coherence? Well, it’s not a seamless flow, but it never jars. Even the live instrumentation of Jeck’s collaborations with Jah Wobble and Drums Off Chaos kind of makes sense. And, honestly, it was a silly thing to focus on when this record is — in a strictly non-literal sense, you understand — banger after banger after swooningly gorgeous banger.
I bought this from the late lamented artist’s bandcamp page.
dogrando writes about some records 