Sean Trane
A fairly-well travelled cornet player that was a regular on the London-jazz, Mark Charig is probably best-known for his tenure in the Keith Tippett Group and accompanying him in the King Crimson albums like Lizard and Island, not to mention a very short passage in Soft Machine. Following that “rock” period, Charig returned to obscurity and in 77, he released the only album (so far) under his own name. Recorded with the help of singer Ann Miller and an usual partner in crime Tippett in a countryside church, Pipedream was released on the rather-extremist Ogun label, with a superb artwork, framed in pink. The novelty of this album is that you’ll find Keith playing the church organ, a zither, and some piano as well.
Opening on a church bell toll (courtesy of Ann Miller, the 16-mins Bellaphon is setting the tone of the general music direction almost as soon as Charig’s cornet resonates, always bordering on the dissonant, but Tippet’s relative inexperience with the organ stops it to become way too extreme like his own albums of the era were. The 7-mins Ghostly Chances features Keith on the zither and many screeching female vocals, and its followed by a short cornet passage called Vega. Across the wax slice, the opening Improvised Past and the closing Magic Forest are close to musique concrete, le latter with Miller’s screechy vocals. But despite a difficult start, Pavanne is probably the album’s most accessible track and highlight with low-freq drones adding some welcome intensity. Unfortunately, the following title track loses the momentum by being the slowest track of the album.
A rather longish album for the era (almost 54 minutes), Pipedream should be approached carefully by those “prog fans” curious about Charig’s name as a leader, but then again Keith Tippett’s name and the Ogun label do give a warning of what to expect from and album that promises a Pipedream. Definitely worth a listen, if only for Tippett’s presence on the church organ.