EEMING at once intricately crafted and free-flowing, the music on Francis Plagne’s Into Closed Air strikes acareful balance between fixed ideas and the more improvisatory mode its creator has often pursued in Melbourne’s newmusic circles. As Plagne tells Uncut, “The sense of airiness or space is very important to me, and I love trying to bring a kind of meandering, searching quality I enjoy in a lot of jazz and improvised music into something that is basicallyasong.”
That quality also points to the influence of Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and their Canterbury cohorts, another well of sound that’s long been dear to Plagne. “The openness in the form, silliness mixed with earnest instrumental detail, the relaxed, undemonstrative singing, airy melodies – it all really resonates with me alot and definitely informs what Ido.”
Yet the singer and guitarist –and art historian on the side –also cites awealth of other music that fed into the album’s three lengthy songs, with Plagne variously striving for “the kind of lumbering feel of Amon Düül II and Swedish psych bands like Harvester or Arbete och Fritid”, and the looseness of ‘70s singer-songwriter milestones by Neil Young and David Crosby. Brazilian music and ECM jazz from the era make their presence felt, too. “Individual sections are often inspired by particular things,” admits Plagne, “but it doesn’t mean they end up sounding anything like them, for better or worse!”
JASON ANDERSON