I had a feeling I’d find a way to touch on one of the record label MMC’s other brilliant gems this year but I didn’t think it would be this way. How does one capture the current milieu? Unable to go much of anywhere at the moment, living either in open denial or in excessive precaution, it seems like everyone is trapped in some sort of malaise. Life as we know it — at least this summer — seems like it’s destined to be awash (and a wash) of experiences.
What we’re left doing, I think, is looking back (out of discouragement, nostalgia, or perhaps reflective, self-acceptance) at how our past summers will forever look different from now on. It’s here where this summer needs some kind of soundtrack to capture or at least kickstart the moment: enter Ian Lynn’s Forgotten Summer.
To quote directly from the man himself:
“Forgotten Summer [was] the first of three thematically related suites. It [was] pastoral in nature although stylistically it falls into the area of crossover jazz. My aim was to capture something of a summer day–rolling hills, a rainy afternoon, a drive to the beach, beautiful sunset memories of a forgotten summer long ago.”
Ian Lynn, From Liner Notes to Forgotten Summer
As for the man himself, Ian, was Sunderland-born but London-raise for most of his life. By the time he signed on to MMC (that little plundered English label for wayward jazz and New Age), Ian had already made his name as a composer and session musician for artists like Gerry Rafferty, Pete Brown, and Sheena Easton. Classically-trained but deeply involved in London jazz circles, Ian jumped at a chance to create something that could speak to his own influences and be of his own voice.
Forgotten Summer was conceived as the first of a trilogy to encompass all the seasons of the year. Early Snow and Celebration would follow, capturing the moods and sounds of fall, winter, and spring, but this one focused on a single season: summer, of course. Almost entirely performed by himself with a bevy of keyboards, drummer Bob Jenkins and percussionist Martin Ditcham would flesh out the rhythm section. Completely instrumental in nature, Ian, would have to suss out all those pastoral cues we’ve all had a chance to experience before.
Here’s where I can’t stop finding things to promote about it. Taking advantage of a certain sonic warmth, Ian uses songs like “Another Good Reason” and “Forgotten Summer” to mix spritely, joyful acoustic passages with all sorts of accompaniments that speak of a sobering reality: summer’s gonna end sometime. Like taking in the forecast of a barely audible weather station playing its working person’s saudade via smooth jazz, so too does Ian’s professionalism eke out little wells of emotion behind its (seemingly) commissioned surface. This isn’t a celebration of summer but a sobering appeal to it.
Terribly inviting and simultaneously inconspicuously steeping itself in sentimentalism, Forgotten Summer across a bunch of interludes and “Sun Dance”, never distances itself that far from its creator to clue us in that summer remains far better in memory than in our present.
Pull up a chair next to your sunlit window (if you have one), get yourself a cold beverage, take a look outside and just wander around a bit with Ian. Forget all about what you can’t do. Think of what you can. There has to be a way to salvage this one.