PETER KNiGHT

The Gemini Cadenza (Own Label PKCD001)

Review by Simon Jones for Folk Roots October issue 1999.

Never one to be pinned down, Peter Knight's been a bit of a chameleon over the years. When not occupied in Steeleye, what exactly was the muse that occupied him? In truth though he's one hell of a folk fiddler, he's equally at home playing classics, jazz or as here his heart is taken with fusion and improvisation.

A logical partner to his earlier An Ancient Cause, he's obviously drunk in the influences gained from knocking about with Danny Thompson. If anything this is even more of a wide screen production than his earlier work, literally a mind boggling field of dreams led to this one. Don't even start to ask - just trust me, it's a circus of style and shade - which leads to music which is distinctive and determinedly individual. Just how different this is can be guaged from the opening The Life & Death Of Mrs. Pearson where his violin holds a mournful conversation with itself, almost verging on the psychotic, bells jangling over a gloomy keyboard, the fiddle eventually moving into a mewing frenzy. By contrast, Goodnight Sleep Well is a lullaby on a cloud of keyboards, in search of an advert for quilted tissues or silk finish paint - smooth as a mill pond, nothing disturbs its sheen.

He has tried stuff like Picnic or E Flat English on Steeleye tours and before now I swear he's given The Gemini Cadenza itself a run out, even if in truncated form. Minus Tim Harries, who handled keyboards on Ancient Cause, this time it's Knight alone and he makes a mean fist of matters. He has devlivered a solo album in every sense - even the marketing and sales are being done from his Hastings residency.

This is one guy you can't tell to go away and devise his own bag of tricks; he's already done it, thanks, and is probably planning the next one as you read this. Different.

Seek at PO Box 62, Hastings, East Sussex, TN34 3ZZ.

Simon Jones