Tuesday, April 28, 2015

26: Love Is - David Roach



No relation to Steven Roach (as far as I know) from number 37. This is one of those 'Landscape Channel' tracks which I mentioned in a blog entry long, long ago. In fact remember it from the Channel 4 'Art Of Landscape' show they used to put on during weekday mornings in the school holidays in 1990 or so when there weren't any schools programmes to show.

This was one of the more memorable ones - not just because of the scenery (made me long to go to the beach, as I still do most days today) but because I remember listening to it and thinking it was about to finish, and then it carried on with another ending and another ending. I don't know if that's some kind of musical trick or just a feature of David Roach's music, but if you watch the above YouTube version of it you'll notice that it ends at 4:53 and then carries on ending for almost an entire minute after that before it does, eventually, stop.

Somehow that made the track memorable enough to stay in my mind for years and years, and when the Landscape Channel in its various internet guises popped up again a few years ago it was probably the first track I looked for. The sax melody is strong, strong enough that I don't want to call it jazz (although I know it is really), and there's even an electric guitar section by none other than the late Alan Murphy, the guitarist who worked with Kate Bush for many years. But it all fits with the video, and you can almost hear the waves gently crashing on the beach at the conclusion and smell the clean, salty air in the chilly sunshine.

Love is... a deserted coastal resort. And a sax song that spends all its time ending.

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