Like many, I first came across the name of Dredd Foole in David Keenan’s cover feature article in the August 2003 ‘Wire’ magazine about the Brattleboro Free Folk Festival. Foole’s album ‘Quest of Tense’ was cited as a major influence on artists like Matt ‘MV’ Valentine and Sunburned Hand of the Man so helped to give birth to the New Weird America scene.
Foole, real name Dan Ireton, is now 58 years old but it’s good to know that the fire in the soul that burned for ‘Quest of Time’ is still aflame for his latest release on Family Vineyard records – a magnificent double album entitled ‘Kissing the contemporary bliss’ remastered from a limited edition release on MV’s Child of Microtones label in 2005.
The album demonstrates that the mind over matter ethos, much vaunted during the recent Olympic games, also applies to creative arts. To do what Dan Ireton has been doing for over three decades demands stubborn intransigence and unwavering self belief.
Above all, there is a wilful disregard of trends at work here. This is music far removed from the dictates of fashion or passing fads. What you hear is the paradox of sounds which are disjointed and chaotic yet at the same time miraculously coherent. Take for example his deconstruction of ‘Girl From The North Country’ where one of Dylan’s simplest songs becomes fragmented and is thrillingly reinvented by Foole.
It’s hard not to think of Tim Buckley as you listen to his vocal gymnastics because Foole has the same way abandoning the idea that songs need to be direct and tightly structured to work. Instead the tracks follow an internal logic of their own which only works because the performers inhabit the pieces, you can’t imagine any two versions of the songs here being alike. There is the invigorating quality of capturing something immediate and unique. Like Buckley, improvisation and spontaneity comes to play a key role in the emotional expressiveness of the singing, the voice serving as an instrument to communicate raw feelings not abstract ideas.
For this to work requires performances heedless of the barriers that come with heightened self consciousness. Dredd Foole never gives the impression that he is holding himself back as primal yelps and moans replace any notion of adhering to static verse-chorus-verse conventions. In lesser mortals the whole could become pretentiously Arty or a disastrous mess but Foole never strays into either territory.
That this album embraces the true meaning of ‘free’ music is evidenced by the sense that you feel alive and empowered just by tapping into its brilliant energy.
