Bill Wells / Stefan Schneider / Annie Whitehead / Barbara Morgenstern - Pick Up Sticks (2004)

Tracklist:

1 Pick Up Sticks
2 Three Line Prayer (Pt. 1)
3 Three Line Prayer (Pt. 2)
4 Family Sighs
5 Waft
6 Perfect Window
7 A Soldier's Shoulder
8 The Dust Of Months

In the esteemed company of To Rococo Rot / Mapstation's Stefan Schneider, Robert Wyatt's sometime musical director Annie Whitehead and Berlin singer/songwriter Barbara Morgenstern, Scotland's leading avant-garde outsider Bill Wells joins The Leaf Label for Pick Up Sticks, a lovely four way collaboration. Bill Wells has previously released a series of Trio & Octet albums on the Domino and Geographic labels. Wells is the go-to man in the Glasgow scene for superior arrangements, having worked with Belle & Sebastian, The Pastels, Arab Strap, Future Pilot AKA, Telstar Ponies, the list goes on. His Bill Wells Octet has been operational for fifteen years, mixing the cadences of floral soundtracks and epic rock within a loose jazz context. "Pick Up Sticks" is beautifully understated, a hushed microscopic recording of clicky percussion and gentle basslines, sometimes breaking into the wider tones of jazz horns and the haunting vermona arrangements of Ms Morgenstern. Lovely.

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