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Released about three years ago by Karaoke Kalk under the title "Osaka Bridge," this precious work is now being reissued by Geographic for the English market with the enigmatic alias "GOK," an eloquent cover, and an unnecessary change to the tracklist.
Bill Wells is a Scottish musician in his fifties, a self-taught jazz musician and pianist by vocation, an outsider who does not disdain, indeed loves, to contaminate himself with the quintessential young music, indie-pop. Over time, he has led trios and octets, achieving wonderful results in "Incorrect practice" "Also in White," albums that I strongly encourage you to rediscover; he gained greater visibility when he became a collaborator with artists such as Pastels, Jad Fair, Future Pilot Aka (formerly Soup Dragons), Isobel Campbell (formerly Belle & Sebastian), and Barbara Morgenstern, focusing on largely instrumental, sober, austere, and always eccentric proposals, conspicuously ironic, naturally changing according to the mutual intentions of the projects. Taming free spirits like J. Fair must not have been an easy task, nor was guiding I. Campbell in the endeavor of reinterpreting B. Holiday in "Ghost of yesterday" without falling into the obvious, engaging with an experimenter of the caliber of B. Morgenstern and producing a gem like "Pick up sticks" was a remarkable feat.
Bill Wells is above all one of those artists who spend a lifetime learning to express themselves like children: the collaboration in question has him directing a Japanese band converted to brass, the Maher Shalal Hash Baz, in a series of short instrumentals (thirteen, plus "Cowfail calypso" and "Times take me so back", a poignant lullaby worthy of triumph at the Zecchino d'Oro of our dreams) resulting in what turned out to be the perfect soundtrack for my lazy summer.
The progression of the tracks is an anthem to indolence; a jarring carousel where the heavy and deflated sound of the brass is tempered by the brightness of the melodies ("On the Beach Boys bus") and the solemnity of some themes is so exaggerated that it borders on the parody of sacred music ("Rye and guy"). The rest is pure magic, a color music box, a sort of Bacharachian compendium devoted to teaching solfège in special classes, punctuated by priceless blunders like the mustaches imprinted on the Mona Lisa of Dadaist memory ("Liquorice tips", "Banned announcement").
It's pointless to go on, I hope I've piqued the curiosity of the child within you: jazz here has little to do with it (it becomes clear only in "Poxy"), confined to a reading hypothesis; I would rather define "GOK" as a manifesto of lounge (art brut) music or, if you prefer, punk music in its most irreverent and least conformist expression; to appreciate it and share its spirit, you just need to be willing to have fun (in the primitive sense of the word, the one that shares the root with the expression "different") and be able to return to the places of your childhood, without nostalgia, with a smile to the sky and a Menelicche tongue between your teeth, aware that nothing is more sacred than innocence and thanking the fearless ones who still know how to blend it with music.
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