(2021) Matt Berry - Gather Up (Ten Years On Acid Jazz)  


Review:
Acid Jazz release Gather Up, a career-spanning box set of music by comedic actor and musician Matt Berry. Available as a four-CD set, Gather Up is part ‘best of’ and part rarities collection and has been compiled by Berry himself. Over 10 years with Acid Jazz Records Matt Berry has released nine incredibly diverse albums, including the tangled-folk rock thickets of Witchazel and Kill the Wolf, the out-there explorations of Music for Insomniacs, TV Themes’ retro-kitsch delights, the twilight grooves of The Small Hours, the classic pedal-steel songwriting of Phantom Birds and the psychedelic sounds on The Blue Elephant. Discs one pulls together an excellent 21-track career spanning collection, including non-album tracks such as ‘Snuff Box Theme’. CD 2 is a selection of rare and never heard before outtakes. It includes cuts from Berry’s 2010 Myspace EP ‘Summer Sun’; outtakes from the Witchazel and The Blue Elephant albums; the ‘Catch Me in Time’ track featuring soul legend Geno Washington; a live radio session version of ‘Take My Hand’ featuring Cecilia Fage; embryonic versions of album tracks, and much more. CD 3, Phantom First, comprises demo recordings of some songs which did and did not evolve into the Phantom Birds album. Many of these involve different track titles and completely different lyrics with familiar melodies wrong-footing the listener. Finally, Live at a Festival which is CD 4 features five songs recorded over three festivals in 2015, including The Green Man Festival in the Brecon Beacons.





Track Listing:
Disc 1 - Gather Up:
1. Take My Hand (2:51)
2. Something in My Eye (3:03)
3. Medicine (3:02)
4. The Badger’s Wake (3:29)
5. World in Action (2:42)
6. One by One (3:09)
7. Take A Bow (2:58 )
8. October Sun (4:54)
9. So Low (2:48 )
10. Summer Sun (3:56)
11. Gather Up (2:21)
12. Theme from Snuff Box (2:50)
13. Middle of the East (3:39)
14. Like Stone (2:55)
15. Phantom Birds (2:39)
16. Music for Insomniacs Part IV (3:07)
17. Say It Again (2:39)
18. The Innkeeper’s Song (Live) (3:09)
19. Obsessed and So Obscure (3:12)
20. Woman (3:32)
21. Solstice (9:27)

Disc 2 - Rare & Unreleased:
1. Bigger Than A Dog (Original Witchazel Intro) (1:50)
2. Take My Hand (Live On Absolute Radio) (2:34)
3. Autumn (Witchazel Outtake) (3:28 )
4. The Dawn (From Myspace EP ‘Summer Sun’ 2010) (2:11)
5. Snuff Box Live Loop (Used Live Between 2005 – 2012) (0:40)
6. Catch Me In Time (3:18 )
7. Dark Beach (From Myspace EP ‘Summer Sun’ 2010) (4:02)
8. The Hangman (Acoustic Version 2007) (2:15)
9. Wonder Theme (Became ‘Something In My Eye’) (3:48 )
10. Music for Insomniacs (Alternative Intro) (3:43)
11. Theme From ‘Sorry’ (Live from Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe 2007) (1:22)
12. Music For Insomnaics (Rejected Theme) (1:03)
13. Walk With Samuel (Devil Inside Me’) (3:15)
14. Blankety Blank (Vocal Intro) (1:39)
15. The Blue Elephant (Trip Two) (3:58 )
16. Sweet Velvet (Became ‘Seasons On Fire’) (1:18 )
17. The Blue Elephant (Alternative Intro) (2:35)

Disc 3 - Phantom First:
1. Covered In Clowns (2:41)
2. Get Her Out Of My Mind (3:02)
3. I’m Going (2:22)
4. Make It Go Away (3:00)
5. Peter Cleopatra and The Windmill (3:04)
6. Play On (0:57)
7. Take A Bow (2019 Demo) (2:34)
8. The Preacher’s House (2:10)
9. A Shot Rang Out In The Forest (2:13)
10. The Wrong House (2:45)
11. Where’s My Love? (1:22)
12. You Danced All Night (2:30)

Disc 4 - Live At A Festival:
1. Medicine / So Low (5:47)
2. Silver Sun (4:13)
3. Theme From Snuffbox (8:18 )
4. Solstice (7:51)
5. The Pheasant (7:30)


Media Report:
Genre: indie-folk, indie-pop, rock
Country: UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits