Jake Blanchard - Fermentation LP (Eiderdown Records)

https://eiderdownrecords.bandcamp.com/album/fermentation

Jake is well known for his striking art/print work having designed many album sleeves for the likes of Pelt, Mike Gangloff and Richard Dawson (his artwork for Dawson’s 'The Ruby Cord' was awarded third place in the Art Vinyl album cover of the year award 2022). Along with Sophie Cooper he is one half of ‘TOR’, an umbrella for a variety of projects including Tor Bookings, Tor Festival, Tor Press, Tor Beers and Tor FM that has made his town of Todmorden synonymous with bringing diverse/creative and the best experimental music to the North of England.

He conjures images in the audio world as well: Jake plays an electric shahi baaja; an instrument similar to the Indian bulbul tarang and Japanese taishōgoto, types of zither using typewriter-like keys to change the pitch of the strings. The shahi baaja plays a central role on ‘Fermentation’ - buzzing and plucked with a wild abandon to create rolling ecstatic riffs of improvisational flow. The drones give way to a barrage of effects that find Jake manipulating the instrument in drifts of virtuosic shred, but the way he toggles back and forth between known and unknown tongues demonstrates a conceptual mastery that matches his technique. There are bits of this you might think were Michael Flower, Sandy Bull or even The Byrds if they decamped to India with a bag of pain meds before recording a night-long improv session. Fermentation’s tangled fusion of East/West and traditional with the post-modern seamlessly shifts between tumultuous intensity and blissed-out serenity perhaps reflecting Jake’s struggles with pain and brief moments of reprieve.

Fermentation came together over the last few years, during which Jake started struggling with a hip problem and chronic pain. This forced him to change his approach to recording music. He was no longer able to play for any significant length of time so the album was recorded in short bursts and gradually pieced together. Due to this Jake had to move away from the extended improvised jams of previous albums and take a more structured route.

Like how a prism separates white light into many colours or many colours are joined into one white beam, music can work this way as well: one chord in many colours, and many colours in one chord. Fermentation is a blistering document that taps into the ecstatic impulse, a monolithic free flowing abandon leading a tonal assault of heavy fiery ether or plunging into pure liquid haze.

Released with Jake's own artwork on Reverse Board Outer Sleeve in a vinyl edition of 300