Kip Hanrahan
Kip chose to be filed under Hanrahan
By Peter Ridley
(December 2010)
I've been working on the concept of the unreliable reviewer. It's not terribly unusual, or even original in thought. When I first considered this authorial position, I was certain that everyone was already in this place while listening to music unknown. You just listen, sometimes for the expected and occasionally for the unfathomable. The difference is that as the unreliable reviewer, you promise to write about the experience.
So, on first listening to Kip Hanrahan, I think it's smoky. I don't smoke, don't know the album and when asked what I think, don't really know what I think. I feel I should have an opinion. You probably think you've got the 'unreliable' part in my role, but hang. I chose to hang onto Kip's music and listen based on the fact that my ears are growing old. Again, you may be considering that age and hearing are part of the 'unreliable' and I can't argue for acuteness, but aural memory is long and longing.
The unreliable reviewer gets to enter into conversation with Kip. There's nothing in it for Mr Hanrahan, not even the choice about how to reply. My ear is rolling through Desire Develops An Edge, hearing something of the Caribbean, and I'm not sure about where I first heard anything near this rhythm. It's back in the late sixties/early seventies and it's a village hall dance between poncy Jaggeresque jigging and Edwin Starr denouncing "War," the track is "Barbed Wire" by Nora Dean. None of this is likely to ring with Kip, so, I have to tell him of the floorboards in the Village hall. He's bound to be keen to hear about the closeness of the grain in the wood, but I remind him that the same spring is in the conga interplay on "All Us Working Class Boys." Anyway, he's a busy man and I think there's more sway than outright dance in his music, so, let's leave that alley of enquiry.
I've spent more time listening to Kip's music and am a little annoyed that mostly, I'm getting New York. I can't blame him but, the truth, well, I only know New York through film. I will visit New York, but I should know New York and I should know of Kip Hanrahan's music. Still, the unreliable reviewer isn't just a bystander. You know Kip, I detect an echo of Mink de Ville's "Spanish Stroll," no, don't turn away... most people in the world only know of a celluloid New York, and, few share anything of the Kip Hanrahan oeuvre (not sunny side up).
This is a pivotal point, a place where I could turn away. Kip is paying me no attention, not recognizing that he ought to engage the public. So, I roll out a little something that, well, seems a little duplicitous, possibly, pretentious. I recall a memory of a Smash Hits interview with Kip. No doubt Kip would deny such an article, the subtlety of his work indicates he's right, but I recall 'burnt umbre' as being his favorite color. Anyway, listen to "Busses From Heaven" on Beautiful Scars and realize the truth of tonal color, especially through the mix of background voices.
Still, Kip Hanrahan offers you time in a harmonious setting: "One Summer Afternoon (For Gil Evans)" certainly feels somewhere about 3:27 PM whether Gil Evans shared that burnt umber moment, or, not. This is the point in time, just in the middle of "Paris through Tears," when my wife expresses that she's not sure about all of the album. There's an irony as we enjoyed one day of our two day Parisian honeymoon. Anyway, with Kip it's collaborative and the voices are many. It's a world wide choir coaxed into creating soundscapes, mostly urban. We've chosen to live this way and Kip reveals how these lives sound. As I experience Beautiful Scars, I note the graphite laden scar at the knuckle of my right hand thumb. A frantic piano on "Rumba of Cities" indicates that scarification is a result of the pace of life from Luanda to Tokyo. I'm sure Jack Bruce has chatted to Kip about London and...
The best unreliable reviewers reside in London, of course, it's no big thing. Edgar Allan Poe put something of this in his short stories and Dickens made a big play on the unreliable. I mention all this to Kip because I'm coming to a critical bit. "A Thousand Nights and a Night," well, Don Pullen is a real sultan of a piano man and Shahrazade a princess, but there's a real clatter as the servants set up the tables for the feast. I recall I bought a small, about nine inches tall, replica of the Venus de Milo in Skegness and hid it in the hollow of an elder bush in a marsh by the River Ryton. It was a homage to classical Greece and the late romantic movement, but I kept this to myself until now. An unreliable reviewer can get things wrong.
Kip made a choice to be Mr Hanrahan. I think I feel what's going on in his music, mostly: file under Hanrahan, Kip.
My name is Peter Ridley. I was born in the fifties in Lawrence (DH) country. School didn't quite work for me and I didn't work for them. I worked thirteen years in an iron foundry, went to college late and became an English teacher. I am happy in education and hope those in front, and alongside, me are okay with my quirks and quackery. I read a heck of a lot but also write stuff.