23 September 2023

THE MAN FROM ATLANTIS with CAMILA NEBBIA and SIMO LAIHONEN – Blues For Archie Shepp (2023, LP/CD Ramble Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Ramble Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Black Vinyl

Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition (comes in a card case)

Release Date: 7 July 2023

The Man from Atlantis is Michael Sill, a Melbourne musician using folk, country, blues, punk American primitive guitar, Indian classical, psych, and free jazz as a reference to traverse the sonic spaceways. Previously making unpopular music as a member of ’90s art prog noised-based projects: Ray of Creation, and krautrock duo Imperial Leatherman. Michael Sill is also the Man behind Ramble Records, giving voice to those who struggle to be heard. Michael, under The Man From Atlantis moniker, has released his works since 2017, and his latest adventure is called “Blues for Archie Shepp”, an album that acts as a tribute to that famous avant-garde Jazz saxophonist, the one and only Archie Vernon Shepp. The album features appearances from tenor saxophonist Camila Nebbia and drummer/percussionist Simo Laihonen. “Blues for Archie Shepp” contains just 5 tracks, written and produced by Michal “The Man From Atlantis” Sill… The opener is called “This Rain” (13:07min), it starts with an acoustic improvised guitar under a weird ‘Psych’ noise, slowly becoming Bluesy and Native American Folklore flirting, then becoming experimentally Psych but without losing its acoustic ‘noisy’ eerie soundscape, and finally reaching a primitive mind-blowing Acid Raga-ish environment! The self-titled “Blues for Archie Shepp”, is improvisational, acoustic-like, with a hypnotic Sax sound – courtesy of Camila Nebbia – and some magical shattered percussion – thanks to Simo Laihonen – slowly becoming an avant-garde free-jazz Impro! “Lay Your Burden Down” (11:21min) is a trippy and mysteriously creepy-like Acid-Blues track while Camila’s Sax and Michael’s ‘stoned’ intoxicated vocals, launch the track to an eerie Avant-Gard-ish stratosphere, with a lot of strange things happening at the background (and at the foreground, I may add, thanks to Archie Shepp’s “Coral Moon” which is being sampled), all these together are resulting a PSYCH sonically blended amalgam of Blues, Jazz, and Avant Garde, presented here in the most astonishing RAW way! Awesome! “You Better Run” (4:59min) is a piece of hot mutated urban and primitive Psych-Blues music (!!!) while the album comes to an end with “Twilight” (1:50min), an avant-garde primitive studio experiment… So, in conclusion, “Blues for Archie Shepp” is a very difficult album. It is also a very different album, an album that emerges a strange charm, an album destined to be cult, an album that will probably ‘grace’ the list with my best albums of 2023… Yeah, that good! TimeLord Michalis