Robert Wyatt
Dondestan

ANACHRONIST

Not everyone can conceive works of such depth, so profound in their themes, and capable of an enormous quality of foresight.

Throughout a career started as a leader and creative mind of the "Macchina Molle" ("Soft Machine" and "Matching Mole") and continued as a solo career, Robert Wyatt has experimented with new solutions, composing works of significant specific weight, from the seminal "Rock Bottom", preceded by the kaleidoscopic "The End Of An Ear", to the more typically Canterbury jazz-rock of "Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard", from the synthetic, contaminated, and elusive pop of "Old Rottenhat" to the recent gems "Cuckooland" and "Comicopera". He has also been interested in social issues, actively participating in communist propaganda, and meanwhile, he has cultivated his own spirit, maturing a personal vision of the world around him.

It is in the wake of this important growth path that in 1991 "Dondestan" was born, one of the peaks of Wyatt's solo production (certainly his most "spectral" creation), another point of no return, and considered by a good part of the critics as the true masterpiece of the English composer after the epochal "Rock Bottom".

For the realization of this work, Wyatt prefers the path already trodden (with excellent results) by its predecessor "Old Rottenhat", exploiting the alchemical secret and the hidden advantages of a poor and essential instrumentation. Piano, organ, (which also serves as a synth bass), and percussion are the sources of a homogeneous and slightly monotonous sound blend, but not for this lacking in appeal. Robert is the author of all the music (with the exception of "Lisp Service", signed by the late Hugh Hopper, his great friend and collaborator from the Soft Machine days), and he also writes half of the lyrics with the eternal muse Alfreda Benge (another memorable cover designed by her for this LP).

"Dondestan" is a creature that unravels through a substantial and well-focused specter of frequencies. A creature gathered in a light amber film, that prefers to knock on the listener's door rather than force it, and that manages to immortalize, in ten cyclical and hypnotic structures, the most hermetic Wyatt. It is jazz, soft but sharp, polished by shreds of primitive psychedelia, and each single track is a tear in the thin curtain of reality.

The beginning gives chills with the opening "Costa"; its cold and surreal incipit that in a few intense minutes melds with the chiaroscuro glimmers of the final pulpit, the percussive gusts, Robert's voice that seems to bow down to touch vibrations of an almost alien nature, in this glimpse, everything clicks marvelously. Yet, instead of taking off, the album progressively loses altitude, culminating in a vision tinged with archaic and rarefied contours in "The Sight Of The Wind" and "Catholic Architecture", both supported by effective up-and-down piano work (in which essential notes seem to reverberate a cumulative tension towards the absolute, saturating every centimeter of his impeccable personality).

After this dazzling start here comes "Worship", the unexpected piece. Airy, with that melody almost rippled by the typically jazzy inflection of the vocals, a godsend for the continuation of the listening. Coming swiftly and mechanically, like a steam train, is "Shrinkap", a sharp and pounding trance that prepares the ground for the two subsequent pearls "Cp Jeebies" and "Left On Man", then closing in the welcoming limbo of "Lisp Service" and "N.I.O. (New Information Order)". Finally, the vaguely childish air of the title track clashes with the final keyboard layer that mournfully brings everything back to a place of absolute suspense. The lyrics, never banal, range from the imaginative power of tracks like "Costa" and "Catholic Architecture", to the eagerness to lighten the centripetal flows of the human ego in "Shrinkap", passing through the satirical accents of "N.I.O. (New Information Order)", "Dondestan", and "Left On Man", real windows thrown open onto the murky reality that absorbs us, with references to social issues and nationalistic obtuse politics sometimes not even so veiled.

Far be it from me to mix sacred matter like Wyatt's music with simple, pompous barroom political talk; however, I feel it is important to emphasize how the nature of such a blatant contrast manages to transform into quality and creative energy in "Dondestan". In that state of "dreaming wakefulness" that hovers in the air and crosses our ears like a breath accompanied by a gasp of conscience. A warm breath like the thoughts that accompany a true warrior during his journey on Earth: "a warrior chooses to walk a path with a heart; he nourishes his own way of experiencing the vastness of life. He is aware of the incorruptibility of such a choice when he feels great peace walking this path, and is in symbiosis with it (cit.)".

 "Dondestan" is thus like a journey, like the path that crystal clear spring water must carve through the mud to reach its estuary. For this, it feeds on the same matter our time is made of, it cannot (and does not want to) disregard it.

"Someday our ocean will find its shore", recited an emblematic verse of Nick Drake, sublimely synthesizing the course that follows the flow of our lives.

I think Robert's spirit is very close to its estuary.

Oh, I almost forgot.

Bon voyage Hugh.....