DJ Alex Corton – Vinyl Reviews

Good Looking Records

LTJ Bukem / Bjorn – Rhodes To Freedom / Watercolours / Inside My Soul / God Chord

2000

As we reach the start of a new Millenium, the releases on Good Looking for my collection, have now two 12”s in one release, containing work from two different artists. I do have one split into two separate, but most are like today’s, up until GLR060 in 2003. This means that we will be spending a couple of days on each of these doubled up versions so we can enjoy the tunes and I can write without steam bellowing out my ears in a frenzied craze. 

   We have gone a fair amount of time now, without hearing from the main man of the label, Danny Bukem, so today we get some tunes from him, and he flys in with a guy called Bjorn tucked under his wing. We’ll review his two tracks after the weekend. 

   Bukem had not been sat around twiddling shit for the last few years. He had a few amazing downtempo tracks he’d prepared for the first 3 volumes in the Earth series, and he’d started the Good Looking Records E.Ps with his ‘Mystical Realms E.P’ in 1998 which, like today’s release, contained tracks which we eventually got on his one and only album, Journey Inwards in this year of 2000. I still can’t grasp it being 25 years ago. We open the lid, pop the vinyl on and drop the needle for today’s lesson on the Bukem tonic. 

  ‘Rhodes To Freedom’ is a track that you’ll only find on this vinyl release and the CD release of Bukem’s ‘Journey Inwards’ album. It was also on Progression Sessions 4. If you ever need reminding of the Bukem sweet spot, look no further. With music like this, you enter this jazz cafe on the edge of paradise. Everything about this track contains this live session of sounds from the percussion persuasions, the deep warm bass guitar and the Rhodes keys that display shooting stars of wonderment. It’s interesting that while Simon Vispi of Intense engineered a majority of the ‘Journey Inwards’ album, it’s another third of Intense who engineered these two Bukem tracks, Dan Duncan. The whole sound is flawless on this tune and delivers a real high quality, all round groove laden production. 

On Side B we have a track you’ll find on ‘Journey Inwards’. The spells cast with this tune are something really special. Bukem was moving from the stirrings of the deep into this live, groove/swing, jazz territory that really pinned his direction. Having the man like Dan Duncan engineering again, that Intense purity flows throughout, raising the bar on the crystal sounds of the music here. That sax pours liquid gold over you. ‘Watercolours’ holds the aces and hands you the ticket for a killer, fresh flowing jazz bonanza. We have here, Bukem reminding us that the creativity and passion hadn’t dissipated one bit. Andy Hamilton who was part of the Flying Fish group who had work on the Earth series, is on the double bass for this one and saxophonist, Andy Ross who appeared with Roots Manuva and Just Jack, appears too. 

    For the cover of this one, I get the feeling Nick was taking the water elements of the title of the ‘Watercolours’ track, and with Bukem’s disc taking the experience of his productions and linking it with the many shapes and movements of water on the label, while the freshness and less experienced disc of Bjorn, making it seem like it was calmer and newer, a patch of water without disruption yet, as this was his first release for GLR. Just my takeaway. 

   We will review the second disc in this release, on Monday. Until then, have a good weekend and play those tunes!