COMICOPERA

Comicopera forms the third part of a run of solid albums from Robert Wyatt which all build on the same essential recording method in which Wyatt is backed by a wide range of guests from across the musical world, with enough common personnel between tracks to give things a sense of cohesion (in particular, Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, Paul Weller and Annie Whitehead have been stalwarts of these albums) and enough variance to work in the wide range of sound Wyatt seeks to capture.

Having established and refined this approach on Shleep and Cuckooland, Wyatt has here unleashed Comicopera on the world, an album which as usual with Wyatt's work keeps returning to jazz but goes on a dizzying journey around the musical world along with it. Perhaps the most wide-ranging and original of the lot, Comicopera takes the listener far and wide - there's some downright surprising excursions into strange electronic realms thanks to a little Eno magic here and there - and the extra cohesiveness lent by the act structure pushes this album to exceed the accomplishments of its two predecessors.

Few artists are able to pull off genuine artistic coups as they are entering the fifth decade of their career in music, but here Wyatt is able to pull off another five-star solo album - by my estimation his first truly top rank release since Rock Bottom - for the 40th anniversary of the London demo recordings that kicked off the fortunes of the Soft Machine. It might be miles away from the expected sound of the Canterbury scene, but Wyatt has been in his own musical cosmos ever since the Rock Bottom era, and Comicopera proves he's still making amazing discoveries out there.