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Django Bates

Spring is Here (Shall We Dance?)

Lost Marble LM003

Completing composer/keyboard player Django Bates's 'Four Seasons' (previous albums reference 'Summer Fruits', 'Autumn Fires' and 'Winter Truce'), Spring is Here is quintessential Bates: quirky, vital, restless and playfully exuberant.

Since Loose Tubes' heyday Bates, placed in charge of large musical forces, has been like a child suddenly dropped into the middle of a fairground, desperate to try out all the rides and experiences laid out before him, but unsure which one to go for first, and thus sampling each quickly in turn.

On this album he's utilising the considerable talents of the students of Denmark's Rhythmic Music Conservatory (where he's resident professor), and they respond magnificently to his extraordinarily varied demands ­ he himself comments 'these musicians are primed to welcome musical difficulties and encouraged to take risks, so I call the band stoRMChaser'.

Tightly harmonised vocals jostle with rhythms taken from all over the musical world, Zappa-esque humour rubs shoulders with art-music seriousness, 'subjects' range from patriotism ('The Right to Smile') to spring's customary effects on lovers ('Fire Brigade') ­ whatever he's doing, though (and he does a great deal throughout, touching more musical bases in a single tune than are found on most albums), Bates does wholeheartedly, and the music's apparent heterogeneousness is tellingly counteracted by the compelling 'spring' motif provided by wholeheartedly, and the music's apparent heterogeneousness is tellingly counteracted by the compelling 'spring' motif provided by Swedish singer Josefine Lindstrand. Bates fans will love this wide-ranging, amusing yet fundamentally serious-minded album.