Anthony Moore reimagines six decades of his sound on ‘On Beacon Hill’

Anthony Moore gives his previous released songs a new life on ‘On Beacon Hill’. His new album was released today.

At twilight we find Anthony Moore, a lone veteran of art tock and experimental sound, roots winding backwards to the halcyon days of ‘Slapp Happy’ and the 70s progressive art rock scene. With the accompaniments of AKA & Friends, he now breathes infernal new life into songs from his six decades of music making, wrapping his avant/pop traditions into a darkly radiant coil of folky chamber music for the ages.

Sitting fierce at the piano keys, Anthony pokes a finger, long and bony like the reaper, at the far distance on ‘No Parlez’. With AKA & Friends in serpentine support, on acoustic bass, violin, trombone and voices, the mournful progression increases.

AKA are Anthony Moore, Keith Rodway and Amanda Thompson, a pagan family of sound worshipers hailing from Hastings, England, whose humble tools of choice for this endeavour are guitar, piano, organ, synthesizer, and vocals. The Friends of AKA are Tullis Rennie, trombone and electronics; Olie Brice, double bass; Richard Moore, violin; and Haydn Ackerley, guitar. Leaving the drums, and their drummer, at home to realise these dream-laden songs, the group manifests a sensuous post-devastation lounge act here ‘On Beacon Hill’, like final-phase Johnny Case on a lost episode of Twin Peaks. Anthony’s innate gravitas is a light through the surreal landscape; his gothic jazz orchestra carves delicately through his songs, releasing the melodies and the melancholy to drift upward, like smoke against a sooty and scorched backdrop.