Peter Ivers Band With Yolande Bevan - Knight Of The Blue Communion

First cacophonous genius from avant-garde maverick

After playing harmonica for Boston’s Beacon Street Union, Harvard music graduate Peter Ivers went solo and recorded this for Epic, with Sri Lankan jazz diva Yolande Bavan. Steeped in blues harp history, but with an ear for the European avant-garde, Ivers concocted an indulgent and multilayed canvas for Bavan’s impressive voice. Opener Cat Scratch Fever starts as a funky blues affair, descending into a disorienting jazz experiment before coming full circle. It’s something of a template for the rest of the album but, like Beefheart, whose influence is clear, Ivers never gets into anything long enough to form clichés. The lumbering, folky Dark Illumination bristles with expectancy: a pounding beat explosion is just around the corner, but never comes. Such delicious and satisfying tension is all over the record.

Known more widely for fronting the cult American TV show New Wave Theatre, which gave airtime to the likes of the Dead Kennedys and The Circle Jerks, Ivers’ legacy as a godfather of US new wave is secure. Tragically, he was found murdered in his flat in 1983. Thankfully, he left us with five or six albums to remember him by, and this is the best of them.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

Hux | HUX 088

Reviewed by Jan Zarebski
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