Mick Karn - Each Eye A Path (2001)

Originally released on Medium Productions (Karn's joint venture with ex-Japan colleagues Steve Jansen and Richard Barbieri), this uniquely adventurous and evocative selection of tracks written and arranged between 1995 and 1999 was finally released in 2001.

Each Eye A Path reveals Karn at his most intimate and unfettered, Steve Jansen (who mixed the album) adds some typically tasteful drum and percussion parts.
Mick Karn's fifth album keeps things basic, yet thanks to some accomplished technology, complex. After the travelogs of Japan and Latin America, and Arabesque and Greek treatments of past works, this is an English album – and very much a solo one (he never works with more than two people on the same track). Each Eye a Path examines both the funky elements of Tooth Mother and the simple bass, synth, and clarinet notepads of Titles and Dreams of Reason Produce Monsters. At first, "Up to Nil" sounds like an outtake from Jean Michel Jarre's Zoolook. "Nil" has some brilliant lyrics ("I must be vile with a girl-proof smile") but Karn mumbles them; he unintentionally sounds Bowie-sque. The most memorable pieces are the ones resembling art film soundtracks – "The Night We Never Met" and "The Forgotten Puppeteer" – the latter a beautiful piece of twinkling keys and clarinet. Among the slower tunes, there are a couple of contemporary grooves in "Angel's Got a Lotus," which adds a dash a cool amid drum programming and murmuring bass, and "Venus Monkey." Both "Latin Mastock" and "My Mrs. T" look to the electronics of Hector Zazou and the jazzier shades of Ryuichi Sakamoto. The washed-out "Serves You Rice" continues the Oriental iconographies of old. Good for a rainy day, in a good way.



Tracks:

01 - Up To Nil
02 - The Salmon Of Knowledge
03 - Latin Mastock
04 - The Forgotten Puppeteer
05 - My Mrs T
06 - Angel's Got A Lotus
07 - Serves You Rice
08 - The Night We Never Met
09 - Venus Monkey
10 - Left Big

Personnel:

Mick Karn - vocals, bass, guitars, saxophones, keyboards, percussion programming, clarinets, drum programming
Steve Jansen - drumkit, additional keyboard, drum and percussion programming, samples
Maya - backing vocals, voices
Apache 61 - organ