Price: £11.50

Format: CD
Artist: Jack Hues
CatNo: DCRC025
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Jack Hues Electro Acoustic Works 20 20 CD
Jack Hues’ brilliant 2021 follow-up to 2020’s acclaimed Primitif was recorded during the recent UK lockdowns and features lyrics that Jack says describe, "What was there in front of me, rather than what was in my head.”
 
Electro Acoustic Works 20:20 is a musically and thematically linked work that addresses many of the big issues of the day and features Josh Magill, Daniel Cano, Pete Grogan, Baby N’Sola and Jack’s daughter Violet.
 
CD in 6 panel digipak with lyric booklet.
 
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Jack Hues “What was there in front of me? Deserted streets, quiet gardens, birdsong, no traffic, no aeroplanes, Covid-19, Black Lives Matter, Brexit, Trump, queues of ambulances outside hospitals, stupefying numbers of dead and dying. In response to the BLM protests here and in the US, I began to write a song, and quite early on in the process I sent it to Baby N’Sola (who has previously worked with Paloma Faith). I needed her input, and she sang brilliantly on it. The song she sang on became “We Gotta Work Together”, consciously evoking the spirit of Civil Rights in America in the 1970’s and questioning the divisive presentation in the media of this latest stage in the struggle”.
 
The lyrics of the songs on this album cover diverse ideas, but Jack wanted the Music to be a set of variations on one idea; “Side 1 presents that idea in “We Gotta Work Together” and then explores some byways before getting back to the main musical argument. Side 2 became “The Hymn To The Moon Goddess” which is a set of alternating variations on Baby’s ad-libs and the Middle eight guitar riff from “We Gotta Work Together”. As things opened up in the late summer Jack had Josh Magill play drums, Daniel Cano played trumpet, Pete Grogan played tenor sax and Jack’s daughter Violet sang. 
 
Then the second lockdown happened and Jack hardly noticed, he worked intensely through October-November and during that time the album took shape. Jack’s dear friend Ron Chadwick spent his lockdown working on a triptych of drawings inspired by his own journey with cancer and with 20:20. One of the set features as the album’s front cover and parallels the music and lyrics, although it wasn’t planned that way.
 
Of this extraordinary year Jack says “2020 was a difficult and deadly year for many people, but it was also a time of slowing down, regrouping, re-assessing and looking to a future brighter than the past. The spirit of this album is all about that optimism”.
1. We Gotta Work Together
2. Don’t Waste Words
3. Sheep
4. Slow Gyrs
5. We Don’t Go Out
 
Hymn To The Moon Goddess
6. iNyenga Part 1
7. iNyenga Part 2
8. Invocation
9. iNyenga Part 3
10. We Gotta Work Together (Reprise)
 
Bonus tracks
11. Frootbat Reset
12. Sounds of the Universe