For those looking elsewhere for inspiration, you can turn your heads away from Japan, for just a moment. Let’s look back toward these United States. Here’s another gem from the forgotten Music West record label. Perhaps that label’s crown jewel, Kenneth Nash’s A Touch Of Kenneth Nash: Music From A Far Away Place epitomizes the far-reaching sound latter-day New Age had reached. Scarcely pretentious, as most New Age from that time was, the music From A Far Away Place dipped its toes in the waters of the world (think Africa, Iberia, with a dash of Asia) to create propulsive New Age which you can do all sorts of things to: meditate, dance, and ruminate with. Divorced from history you can imagine the sheer enjoyment and creativity afforded to produce it.
Kenneth Nash remains a fascinating figure to discover. A drummer and percussionist, first and foremost, it’s his rhythmic talent that creates the windy, snakey, beats that propel this album forward, allowing other special talent (used to making more meditative music) to come out of their shells and really play with vivid color.
Three names that immediately pop out when looking at the liner notes are those of Richard Schönherz (spelled Shoenherz there, for some reason), Carl Hänggi, Steve Erquiaga and Frank Martin. Richard joins us from the Windham Hill label to help Kenneth get that glassy open-air production he afforded to the slept-on work of Schönherz and Stott. Carl unfortunately has history lost to time but appears to have been influenced by the school of Göttsching-esque guitar playing.
Then, we move on to Steve Erquiaga a Post-Santana session guitarist who seems adept at liquifying the Latin Jazz school into a more technophilic trapeze. Frank Martin lends his gorgeous keyboard work, as heard in the music of Narada Michael Walden and Angelo Bofill, here to create many a bed of languid R&B soundscapes. Somehow, Mr. Nash who had helped them out in some form of fashion before, brings their talents altogether in a way that speak to Kenneth’s own love of tropical music. You barely register this too, but Kenneth’s roots in gospel music and in new, Christian New Age paint the edges of some of the work here.
“Through The Keyhole”, co-written with Schönherz and Hänggi, flies you in with peak Balearic vibrations that remind me of the better Pat Metheny compositions. Gorgeous, and in many ways watery-sounding, it does a great job of placing you in that murky, twisty tropical New Age that will fill the rest of the album.
“P&L Line” takes stylistic cues from African music to create a rough floating boogie. In the end, it plays like a distant cousin of something you’d hear on a Finis Africae record. Songs like “Just Before the Dawn” appear as extension of that dreamy MPB, or Amazonian, sound heard on records by ECM’s Codona (or previous F/S share, Shadowfax). “Omni” then dips again into the techno guitar-ambiance of Ash Ra, finding some commune between the guitar-centric, European New Age Jazz of his European friends and his own African ambient music.
It’s really hard to describe this album since every song shifts through a different mood. One song like “Catch A Shooting Star” might traverse through the rarefied air of a really well-done smooth jazz funk monster while another like “You’ve Been There Before” seems like it was created by osmosis from a forgotten Joan Bibiloni session.
Simply witness a song like “Seascapes”. Originally created two years prior, for a Christian New Age Jazz record. There it had a solemnity to it that fit perfectly the reflective airs of Steve Erquiaga’s own A Time For Joy (Reflections In Guitar). Now, remade to fit a more organic, looser environment, it gains (perhaps) a bit more melancholia and (perhaps) even a bit more joy — if such things are possible to do in tandem. As the reflective original turns more meditative, looking for bits of electricity, bits of uptempo, it turns this song into a romantic dialogue between sand and earth, between you and wherever you’re hearing it. And once again, saudade rears its head here.
As, the album simply winds down with more of this, spatial “dance” songs simply inviting you to tune in and turn off some of that “noise” you’re bound to hear elsewhere today, there’s a deeply personal record, if you can really tune into it.
As for me, I can’t escape the smile I get whenever “Fresca” comes on. In my mind, I’m definitely far, elsewhere then.
A world view into imagination. A Touch Of Kenneth Nash is a groundbreaking work of unusual character and warmth. It’s part real and part mythical, a voyage into your dreams and fantasies of far away places…
– From liner notes to A Touch Of Nash – Music From A Far Away Place
… and who better than Kenneth Nash to create these captivating rhythms and lush, sound paintings. Now it’s time for you to hear these compositions as one musical communication from one far away place in your own imagination.