BILLIE BOTTLE & THE MULTIPLE: THE OTHER PLACE

Billie Bottle and Martine Waltier were invited to compete on BBC's The Voice and the question was how much of their art could they fit through a format which mostly resembles a karaoke contest. Well millions saw Billie in her orange tights and fluoro-pink ski jacket as the duo re-worked SNAP's "The Power". Twitter goes wild and by the end of the evening they had acquired a following the size of a main stage festival crowd.

This info was in the liner notes that are very thick, the whole package is so well done. So after the show they proceeded to travel and sing this song "The Power" and then ask the people questions about who and what is the power. So each of the 17 tracks here has a date, time and location at the end of the lyrics. This is a British political album and it's very vocal heavy. I would put this under Crossover as I don't hear Canterbury at all despite Billie being a Canterbury fan.

She did a tribute song on what would have been Phil Miller's 70th birthday and of the very long list of thankyous she mentions The Canterbury Sound along with surprisingly Markus Reuter, maybe not the same guy. This is sophisticated pop with a jazz flavour as we get plenty of sax and really it's the sax that impresses me the most about this album and that would be Roz Harding. MAGIC BUS' Viv Goodwin-Darke adds flute, Matrtine who I have mentioned adds violin and Lee Fletcher adds his talent in the studio plus he is a multi-instrumentalist. Billie is mostly singing and playing keys or acoustic guitar.

I think it's pretty cool that Billie's Mom was a big Kevin Ayers fan along with ELP. Billie mentions Richard Sinclair as her favourite bass player and being a fan of the band SCHNAUSER. So yeah we keep getting this Canterbury/Crossover connection with her music but honestly the Canterbury isn't in distorted organ or those familiar sounds but with whimsical vocals and silly but intelligent lyrics that Robert Wyatt apparently loves.

This is a long one at over 76 minutes and all about British politics. So not my thing and neither are vocal heavy albums which is why the 3 stars. It's like listening to a concept album and while this could be described as brilliant, listening to this over the past week was a chore. Again not my music but I know people who love this charming release.