Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Too often we are stifled by other people’s narrow parameters of what it means to learn, and whilst we may be proficient, competent, taught how to feel practised and trained, we are by no means creative, engaged or inspired to be original. Anyone, given time can learn the scales of Time, but it takes imagination and inventiveness to be an artist.
A teacher will write off a pupil for not sticking to the plan, but not realise that the gift of experimenting is what brings the tune together, by dismissing the outreach of the lesson the pupil instead becomes their own master, they are the ones who control the narrative.
There is something alluring about such musicians, it is almost as if they have the ability to hypnotise the listener within the realm of beautiful anarchy, the self-taught inspiring the self-determining, and for Kathryn Locke, along with her band Chodompa Music, Sarah Allen on flute, Jo Freya on sax and clarinet, Jo May on percussion, and Geoff Coombs on mandola, that resonance of performance is framed with honour in the atmospheric, engrossing dynamism album, LA.
The voice that is silent can still speak, and despite Kathryn Locke having to deal with the long after effects of an illness that left her unable to verbally communicate for several years, through the music she has created, she never lost the ability to engage, to impart the thoughts on her mind.
It is seeing past the trauma, of the day when the words roar as much as much as the heart, that has made this new creation stand out with uniqueness and convey the message that others who perhaps play by numbers would have missed, and as tracks such as the opener Dancing In The Ancient Dirt, Dervish, Firebear, A Knowing Touch, Hugger Mugger and the scintillating and honest appraisal of When The Heart Roars with HH the 17TH Karmapa all speak their truth, all raise the voice of Ms. Locke.
The freedom of expression is paramount, to stifle it, to question it, to silence it in anyway is a crime against the persuasive endeavour of human existence, and we must always be on hand to urge the music, the art, the voice to be heard. Throughout LA, Kathryn Locke with Chodompa Music, the knowledge we seek is heard, and marvelled at, and one that cannot be dismissed.
Ian D. Hall