PATRICK KAVANAGH – THE BEGINNING OF BEGINNINGS (CDR by Killer’s Car Records)
The one time before we hear of Patrick Kavanagh was in Vital Weekly 968, when JKH reviewed a release of his with Anastasia Mano under the name of Subterranean Death Trap. In the press text
for his latest solo release, he writes he was also a member of Spiney Fleshpot (along with the recently deceased Peter Read) and that he plays around with drummer Louis Burdett. Before that
he was a member of Jaundiced Eye (with John Murphy, also deceased), Dweller On The Threshold, Box The Jesuit and Madroom. His earliest bands were Moist, Leather Moustache and Smack Of Jellyfish. None of the somewhat silly band names mean much to me. His main instruments in his solo work are the piano and a synthesizer, and he has three very long pieces, and two that clock at nine minutes, so perhaps also a bit long already. This album is a bit of a mixed bag, I think. The first three pieces are explorations of the ambient music template, but not so much in the Eno/Budd style. Kavanagh plays freely and without that much reverb added to the mix. He adds something else, and that’s a field recording in a strong collage like manner. People talking, street sounds and a bit of percussion are thrown in and it is all perhaps less ambient and more radiophonic/modern classic, especially the more solemn ‘The Leaves Danced For Wanda’. The best piece was ‘Emergence From The Chrysalis’, in which the piano is pushed back in favour of electronic sounds. And what about the other two, you may ask? ‘Plough’ and ‘Grow’ are pieces for hammered piano sounds, the fast and the furious; maybe Kavanagh calls this is his minimalist composer interest, but I found both pieces very weak and out of place on this album. He could have left both out and have
much a more excellent record that spans fifty minutes, and not half good but full length. (FdW)
