Johnny Fox - Ar Fresco
Info: Wexford lo-fi indie-folk act Johnny Fox has shared a taster, via single 'Ar Fresco', of what is to come from his latest album, Águas, which is due for release at the start of October.
'Ar Fresco' (translation: Fresh Air), like the rest of the tracks from 'Águas', was written to accompany lyrics written by my partner Samantha Capatti Bezerra (as were those from its sister record 'Cais'), and is built upon a live jam recorded with Basciville men Cillian and Lorcan Byrne and their long time collaborator Chris Colloton.
I think the track captures the relaxed nature of those initial band sessions (while also presenting some fine and quite intricate instrumentation by the three boys) and demonstrates some of the looser, more jazzy elements that I was keen to explore on this record.
A synopsis of the lyric by Samantha...
'Let's go for a walk. I want to know what is going on in your life. I need to get out of here and get some fresh air and stop thinking about the damage. I invite you to stay. It is too hot outside now. The silence of the stars and your dark skin'
In 2016 Johnny Fox's album Cais was in our Top 5 Irish Albums of the Year, with Noel writing in his review at the time; "Throughout, the songs are woven together with the connecting thread of field recordings from their time in Brazil, from drunken parties to chirping birds, giving the album a feeling of real intimacy, binding the tracks together, creating a palpable sense of time and place throughout the work."
'Ar Fresco' is a direct bridge to the previous LP, the intimacy and tenderness is still there, however, Fox has also breathed a new energy into the music, and appears to have been digging deeper into Brazilian jazz in the intervening period. A good example for reference would be The Dave Brubeck Quartet's Paul Desmond, a prolific writer of Bossa nova music over a 20-year period between 1955-75.
The track radiates a warm glow right from the very beginning, and Fox's vocal is the balm to an unforgiving hot summer's day. It's seriously impressive how the instrumentation sounds so fulsome, almost as if a full orchestra were present, the real kick takes hold at 2:28, it's so mellow it's almost psychedelic as we dive head first into cool jazz territory, damn that rhythm and percussion is tasty. It's like a song in three parts, as the final third sees the clarinet enters the fray and whisks us out of this world and into the next. Roll on the full suite of Águas on the 5th of October.
Águas will be released 05/10/18, with an album launch show - a joint collaboration with Cursed Murphy, and the first in our Foxhole Sessions series of shows - scheduled for the 28th of September - full details available here.
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