WYCKHAM PORTEOUS: '3 AM'
CORDOVA BAY RECORDS: CBR-0352
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 20th AUGUST 2007

 

When BBC Radio 2 broadcasting institution Bob Harris played a promotional copy of Please Please Me, a single by Vancouver-based singer songwriter Wyckham Porteous, little did he know what he was setting in train. Of course, a cover of a Beatles chestnut is often regarded as the last resort of the recording scoundrel; forty years ago, it was a guaranteed method of scoring a hit.

However, Please Please Me was a cover version like no other; it was produced by the legendary Andrew Loog Oldham, former manager of The Rolling Stones. Oldham had worked with the Fab Four in their very early days, and remembered the songs as having been composed as a Roy Orbison style ballad. Producer George Martin encouraged the band to pick up the pace, until it became the Merseybeat classic we all know and love. With Wyckham Porteous, Oldham slowed the song back to its original pace, added plangent layers of steel guitar and sitar, and the result was one of the most memorable, soulful and moving cover versions ever. When played on the Bob Harris and Mark Lamarr shows, Wyckham was inundated with well over 1,000 hits on his website, with listeners clamouring to know where they could buy it. Well, the good news is that Please Please Me is one of eleven tracks on 3 AM, the magnificent new album by Wyckham Porteous.

3 AM proves that the artistry Wyckham displayed on the Please Please Me single was no fluke, for this engaging singer-songwriter has, in collusion with Andrew Loog Oldham has made an album of staggering emotional range and depth. Amidst sparkling cover versions of songs by Bruce Springsteen, The Drifters, and a Sammy Cahn opus, are original Porteous material such as the truly affecting Harper’s Ferry, Ancient Highway and Deep Into The Water. Andrew Loog Oldham also proves that he has not lost his production touch; back in the sixties, he was responsible for many pop classics on his own Immediate Records label; in the seventies and eighties, he sculpted the sound for fine albums by Donovan, and the brilliant The Poet for Bobby Womack, and 3AM is a remarkable addition to his production résumé.

3 AM has a feel and sound somewhat similar to that of classic Lee Hazlewood solo works – Wyckham inhabits much the same sort of dark, deeply emotive musical terrain, rich in atmosphere and musical gravitas.

Wyckham Porteous will be coming to the UK in September of this year to play some live shows and to promote this wonderful new album. Andrew Loog Oldham is also available via e-mail to assist in the promotion of 3 AM.

“I feel very fortunate to have met and got the opportunity to record Wyckham Porteous. I’ve been living in Vancouver for the summer for the past few years and had struck dumb as regards finding something tasty to record – twenty-two year old impassioned or intoxicated libertine wannabes are better left to the younger those who did not get to taste the grail as I did with the likes of The Stones and Small Faces. Wyckham’s voice and readings are a treasure. To me he’s like a white protestant west coast aesthete atheist Leonard Cohen meets Harry Dean Stanton who is a warm, warm performer whose voice is like a bottle of wine who has matured into a friend and who, with these recordings, has opened up more than a few glasses of radio and home friendly recordings.” ~ Andrew Loog Oldham

Please contact Alan Robinson or Lesley Shone at Indiscreet PR on 07813 290 474 or via this website for further details.

www.wyckhamporteous.org

 

MARTIN GORDON: 'THE WORLD IS YOUR LOBSTER'
RADIANT FUTURE: RFV009CD
RELEASE DATE: MONDAY 20th AUGUST 2007

 

‘Since finally breaking the 25 year semi-silence that followed the end of Radio Stars, Martin Gordon is clearly of the opinion that, if you have a successful formula, you stick to it. And the fact that the formula he adheres to is one of maniacal brilliance, breakneck wordplay and punch-drunk powerpop, only confirms his strategy’.
All Music Guide

‘The bizarre brew of comedy philosophy, Beefheart-down-the-pub dynamics and pop consciousness works wonders’. Uncut

‘Like Brian Eno fronting 10cc at a cleverness convention, this eccentricity from the ex-Sparks sideman irritates and entrances equally’. Classic Rock

‘His 'pop for grown ups', polished like the suggested precious diamond that it actually is, combines infectious melodies with powerful riffs, texts that would delight Noel Coward and an acute and parodic British sense of humour’.
Popular 1 magazine, Spain

The late Frank Zappa once posed the rhetorical question, “Does Humour Belong In Music?” Of course, he is no longer around to witness the ludicrous parade of clowns who clog up the pages of the music press and the charts. However, he may well have found something of an unlikely ally in the shape of Martin Gordon.

Sometime alumni of Sparks, Jet and The Radio Stars (the latter of whom created music that was often funny ‘ha ha’ as well as ‘peculiar’), Martin Gordon bases himself in Germany these days, which gives him a sense of Geographical as well as ironic distance from British society, and takes an unerring pop at a variety of contemporary cultural Aunt Sallies.

His latest long-playing offering, The World Is Your Lobster combines lacerating wit with some sublime moments of power-pop heaven, and even finds time to dip into the songbooks of such classic songwriting duos as John Lennon & Paul McCartney, and William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan along its marvellously inventive, entertaining way. Humour might well belong in music, but there’s also room for top tunes, skilled musicality and pop hooks snappier than a crustacean’s claws.

The album does not scream, however, when thrown into boiling water.

Martin Gordon will be available for all manner of promotions in support of this excellent release.

Please contact Alan Robinson or Lesley Shone at Indiscreet PR on 07813 290 474 or via this website for further details.

www.martingordon.de