British rock legend Robert Wyatt continues to slay in 2014, adding a new album to an honorary doctorate from the University of Kent and an upcoming biography, two highlights of the revered musician’s eventful year. Determined to close 2014 in style, the former Soft Machine and Matching Mole leader has announced Different Every Time, a double LP featuring rarities and collaborations. The career-spanning collection will cover Wyatt’s four-decade-long career, picking out 30 songs from his Soft Machine years on to the present.
The album is partially conceived as a companion piece to Wyatt’s biography Different Every Time, by Marcus O’Dair, out in the UK on October 30. O’Dair co-curates the anthology, with the first disc, subtitled “Ex Machina,” chronologically arranged and poised as an accessible introduction to Wyatt’s work. But don’t let the “rarities and collaborations” tagline fool you. The amount of gems included here is mindboggling: from the epic Canterbury scene flagship “The Moon in June,” passing through a live version of “A Last Straw” (originally from 1974’s magnificent Rock Bottom), a deconstructionist jazz-pop experiment (“Signed Curtain”), and down to 2007’s “Just as You Are.”
Not one to let a Marxist pun pass him by, Wyatt has titled the second disc “Benign Dictatorship,” devoting it to rarely-heard collaborations and guest appearances. The batch is as assorted and diverse as Wyatt’s career itself, including high profilers like John Cage, Nick Mason, Björk, Phil Manzanera, and Hot Chip, as well as the more cultish Epic Soundtracks or Steve Nieve. The album also features Wyatt’s stellar reimagining of Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding” (which you can hear below), though his version of The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” was sadly left out.
Different Every Time will be available as a double 2xLP set, a double CD, and digitally. The album is out on October 30 via Domino.
Different Every Time tracklisting:
Disc 1 - “Ex Machina”:
01. Soft Machine - “Moon in June”
02. Matching Mole - “Signed Curtain”
03. Matching Mole - “God Song
04. Robert Wyatt - “A Last Straw” (from Live At Drury Lane)
05. Robert Wyatt - “Yesterday Man” (from Disc 1 of EPs)
06. Robert Wyatt - “Team Spirit” (from Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard)
07. Robert Wyatt - “At Last I Am Free” (from Nothing Can Stop Us)
08. Robert Wyatt - “The Age of Self” (from Old Rottenhat)
09. Robert Wyatt -“Worship” (from Dondestan Revisited)
10. Robert Wyatt - “Free Will and Testament” (from Shleep)
11. Robert Wyatt - “Cuckoo Madame” (from Cuckooland)
12. Robert Wyatt - “Beware” (from Cuckooland)
13. Robert Wyatt - “Just as You Are” (from Comicopera)
Disc 2 - “Benign Dictatorships”:
01. Jeanette Lindstrom - “The River”
02. Anja Garbarek -“The Diver”
03. Hot Chip - “We’re Looking for a Lot of Love”
04. Epic Soundtracks -“Jellybabies”
05. Robert Wyatt - “Shipbuilding”
07. Happy End - “Turn Things Upside Down
08. Monica Vasconcelos - “Still in the Dark”
09. Working Week - “Venceremos” (Bossa mix)
10. Phil Manzanera - “Frontera”
11. Steve Nieve + Robert Wyatt + Muriel Teodori - “La Plus Belle Langue”
12. Cristina Dona - “Goccia”
13. Nick Mason - “Siam”
14. Mike Mantler - “A L’abbatoire”
15. Mike Mantler - “Sinking Spell”
16. Bjork - “Submarine”
17. Cage/Steele - “Experiences No. 2”
• Robert Wyatt: http://www.strongcomet.com/wyatt
• Domino: http://www.dominorecordco.us