Mick Turner - Music & Paintings

November 10, 2007 10:47 PM

Mick Turner: The melodies stagger and dance and swing and fall like events, emotions and thoughts. For me this...is a celebration of life, all of it, good or bad, for me it's a way to understand things I can't say with words.

More Galleries
Mario's Cafe [2004, 2003]
Bright! Gallery [2004]

Album Art
Blue Trees, Moth, She Has No Strings Apollo, 7 Angels, The Swimmer, Marlan Rosa, Ocean Songs, Cinder, Horse Stories, Whatever You Love, You Are, Live! at Meredith, Tren Brothers EP, Tren Phantasma

Get On Jolly
One of Turner's more intriguing projects is a collaboration with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy as The Marquis de Tren on the album Get On Jolly. The title is a homophone for Gitanjali^w, a collection of song offerings by Rabindranath Tagore that provides BPB's lyrics on the album. If by now Turner's unique guitar styling has caught your ear, you can try learning some yourself using tabs from Get On Jolly (64, 66) and the live versions, Get the Fuck On Jolly (CII, II/XV, LXIV, LXVI, and LXXXVI).

posted by carsonb (9 comments total)

Ewps, here's a more readable online text for Gitanjali.
posted by carsonb at 10:55 PM on November 10, 2007 [2 favorites]

The Dirty Three put on the greatest live show I'd ever seen in 2000. The music just grabs your heart and shakes you until you're purged of anything and everything and your soul is pointing to true north and no instrument will ever match the expressiveness of Warren Ellis' violin ever ever again and it's all burned out of you. All the yucky shit in life just gets burned out of you like that violin is a cleansing fire.

Turners paintings are a treat too. Get on Jolly didn't do anything for me. A bit too academic and self indulgent.
posted by Skygazer at 12:12 AM on November 11, 2007

Get On Jolly is rather dry. However, have you given Get the Fuck On Jolly a chance? I found the live recordings (issued on a rather limited edition tour ep but available, um, other ways) to be much more enjoyable.
posted by carsonb at 5:37 AM on November 11, 2007

A lengthy-ish post about Mick Turner (Tren) and no mention of Jim White, the greatest living drummer? For shame!
posted by dobbs at 6:07 AM on November 11, 2007

Jim White is the other Tren Brother. He filmed the videos for (and played the drums on) Crow (melodies) and Swim (swing). He is a prolific and extremely talented musician, though limited by the range of his instrument. I like how (to steal Thom Jurek's words) he finds rhythm between beats. Not to be confused with the Wrong-Eyed Jim White.
posted by carsonb at 6:20 AM on November 11, 2007

Jim White is a good guy knew him for a bit when he lived in NYC for a while before he rightly discovered how much the city sucked for musicians (at the tiime early 90s) and went back to Aussie land thankfully to found the Dirty Trios. It's hard to describe his style. His playing is like a kid throwing stuff at his drumkit on a creaky ship in a harbor and it just kills..

He and Turner were in a band called Venom P. Stinger in the late 80s. Info and mp3s (woohoo) are here.
posted by Skygazer at 9:11 AM on November 11, 2007

Venom P. Stinger live performance clips.
posted by Skygazer at 9:38 AM on November 11, 2007

Reminds me of Jeff Buckley, but also of gy!be. (This is good.) Thanks!
posted by wobh at 2:13 PM on November 12, 2007

Thanks for those links, Skygazer. I must say, however, that Turner's more recent stylings are much more to my taste than that older stuff. The gentle way he wanders and explores within a song while maintaining a thread of structure captures my imagination. It's jazzy like that, bolder than a piano but less-so than horns. When I listen to his albums I see his world so vividly...I heard him first, then discovered his paintings. It was incredibly gratifying to put color and form to the imaginary world I'd been exploring through the music. I've long called it the 4th Angel because of its place on the 7 Angels EP, but The Beach That Leads To Your Shore (as it's listed on the new release, Blue Trees) is my favorite all-time piece of music and a great showcase of Turner's world.
posted by carsonb at 6:06 PM on November 12, 2007