Jack Howard – LightHeavyWeight
LightHeavyWeight (cover)
Buy Now (2018 original release album):
Jack’s seventh full length studio album takes inspiration from travelling the world with Midnight Oil.
Released In: [Australia / NZ].
Release Date: 20 October 2018.
Australian Chart Position: N/A.
Availability: Moderately common. Available new in digital and vinyl forms.
Value: A$15-A$35.
Legend:
Commercial single.
Promotional single.
Version: Independent Australian digital album.
Album length: 40 minutes, 17 seconds.
ReplayGain loudness: -7.56dB (2018).
- Montreal (Step Outside Reality)
- Silver Springs
- Sydney (I Really Wish That You Were Here Tonight)
- Toronto
- Paris (Hitch Your Wagon To A Star)
- Seattle (Speak Low)
- Portland
- Oslo
- Auckland
- Silver Springs (James Lee from Black Cab remix)
In 2017, Jack Howard toured the world with Midnight Oil as their trumpeter/multi-instrumentalist. In the long hours of down time along the way, Jack wrote a series of instrumental travelogues – a kind of musical correspondence from far-flung corners of the globe. When the tour was over, Jack continued to develop the music in his home studio, The Bungalow, and Lightheavyweight is the final result.
Inspired by the trumpet/soundscapes of artists like John Hassell and Japan’s Toshinori Kondo, Lightheavyweight features Jack’s lyrical trumpet lines and arrangements layered over pulsing beats and a rich sonic palette of squelching synths, slide guitar and heavy bass. Words where it suits. Sometimes driving, sometimes haunted, enigmatic, noir-ish.
Jack has been releasing his own music independently for the last twenty years. He has mostly been a man of bands – from Hunters & Collectors and The Oils to his own outfits, The Long Lost Brothers and Epic Brass. Lightheavyweight marks the beginning of another ambitious musical chapter for a performer described as “one of the great quiet achievers of Australian music.”
Inspired by the trumpet/soundscapes of artists like John Hassell and Japan’s Toshinori Kondo, Lightheavyweight features Jack’s lyrical trumpet lines and arrangements layered over pulsing beats and a rich sonic palette of squelching synths, slide guitar and heavy bass. Words where it suits. Sometimes driving, sometimes haunted, enigmatic, noir-ish. Composed in the long downward hours between gigs on Midnight Oil’s Great Circle tour of 2017 where Jack featured as multi-instrumentalist/horn man. He wrote a series of blogs and musical travelogues along the way. These nine tracks began life as those travelogues.
“Another hotel room. Baseball on TV, footsteps down the hall, a fire engine down Yonge Street. The room is odourless. My five senses are not being taxed. I’ve got a crick in my shoulder and a sore neck from dragging around my increasingly burdensome luggage. The hotel room is a safe haven and I look forward to it with possibly disproportionate anticipation after a long day’s travel. We’ve stayed in some fine hotels along the way but this one is a bit odd and a bit tawdry with a slippery fake wooden floor (particularly bad acoustics for trumpet practice), chipped furniture, a door that won’t shut properly and someone else’s pubic hair on the toilet seat…”
“…Sixty kilometres back to the hotel post-show in our black runner van, with a local brew traveller and a sky full of stars. The van gradually lapses into a contented silence. Inner thoughts, tomorrow’s schedule, hopefully a good night’s sleep. Not the ache and the clatter that spins and keeps you awake past dawn. But there’s always the free hotel breakfast to get you up and going. Another day begins.”
Written, produced and performed by Jack Howard on the road in 2017; and in The Bungalow, Elwood 2018. Photos and art by Jack. Mastered by Craig Harnath at Hothouse Audio, St. Kilda.
