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JULIAN GASKELL – Demonstration Recordings

Posted: May 9th, 2005, by Tom Leins

Julian Gaskell is part of the Icons of Poundland collective that wreaked musical havoc in the north-west with their home-baked folk/skiffle/punk mischief. He now resides in the more sedate climes of Falmouth and writes spooky, upbeat songs that sound like Tom Waits strung-out on fresh-air! The four tracks that make up ‘Demonstration Recordings’ aren’t a million miles from Mr Waits’ often-potent light jazz/dirty blues cocktail, and rattle between whacked-out, lowdown gritty stompers like ‘Learn From Your Mistakes’ and the gothic, gypsy-blues of ‘Gather! While Ye May’. His voice is full of bedraggled, smoky mystery and he plays guitar, harmonica, balalaika, banjo and zither. For anyone who doesn’t know what at least one of those instruments sounds like, the answer is: pretty special. This CD bubbles along like a particularly bucolic avant-folk experiment. If you like your avant-folk experiments bucolic then you’ve come to the right place.

Contact: julian@iconsofpoundland.co.uk



Tom Leins

Tom is a relative obscurity in diskantland. All we know of him is that he's from Devon and that he writes a fanzine called 'Voices from Downtroddendom', so draw your own conclusions from that. Our conclusions are that he's probably got a funny accent and a bit too much time on his hands. So he'll fit right in around here.

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