Ashley Davies’ Gold is a grand piece of mostly instrumental music that harkens back to the pre-punk days when, perhaps due to the mega success of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, adventurous listeners walked the promenade through seriously constructed (often sans vocals) records.
They included Jack Lancaster and Robin Lumley’s Marscape, Tom Newman’s Faerie Symphony, Island-period Jade Warrior albums, Pekka Pohjola’s B the Magpie (aka Harakka Bialoipokku!), Bo Hansen’s Music Inspired by the Lord of the Rings, and the sadly neglected Thomas Almqvist’s Nyanser and Shen Men. All of these records brushed through rock, folk, jazz, and just about anything else. Such were the times.
Speaking of a promenade, Gold gives a nod to Modest Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, as it also provides a soundtrack through a series of paintings. To be fair, there is no “Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks.” There’s no “Great Gates of Kiev.” But rather, because this is not classical music, Ashley Davies creates musical portraits with the before-mentioned rock, folk, jazz and just about anything else of paintings by his World War II Avro Lancaster tail-gunning uncle and sometimes amateur painter Len Davies. He brushed (to use the word as a verb a second time!) the Australian story of Harold Lasseter, who claimed he found a gold reef in central Australia. Hence, the Aussie folk tale of Lasseter’s Reef.
But to the music: Of course, “Birth” begins the saga of our prospector Harold. It’s a brisk and dramatic guitar, bass, percussion, sax, and string-driven tune, with a few wordless locals. It’s certainly a nice send off. Next, “Bush” is really great and complex late-’70s-styled prog rock-jazz. This one bounces a bit with a melodic piano pulse. And there’s an interesting dual acoustic/electric blend.
The Australian journey continues with “Outback,” with more percussive bounce, dramatic strings, a nice acoustic guitar and piano ride, more impressionistic vocals, and a cool stern guitar coda. Yeah, it’s more of that artistic ’70s instrumental stuff and conjures the (also) sadly neglected work of Gordon Giltrap, with his albums like Perilous Journey and Fear of the Dark. In keeping with the Lasseter’s Reef myth, “Discovery” is sax joyous, and it soars as a pretty good prog-rock dance.
Our guy Harold, as the Lasseter legend informs the always myth-consuming public, says he “perished in 1931 after separating himself from the expedition that was mounted in an effort to rediscover the supposed reef.” Thank you, the intrigue of history! But back to the music (again!).
The tense “Gold” does justice to any discovered beauty with an emotive sax solo and a sad trumpet (to use the word once again) promenade. It’s a brief tune. But “Meeting” gets all prog jazzy with an explosive and lovely weird piano, guitar, percussive, and trumpet deeply grooved stomp. It’s a nice tune. Then, “Camel” combs the Western Australian desert with a sand shifted and violin drifted melody. Odd, “Walking” has an organ drone and an almost ’50s stroll, with a vocal that simply sings the song’s title.
It was claimed by Fred Blakeley, the leader of that Lasseter expedition in 1930, that our Harold “did not die in Central Australia but escaped to America.” Perhaps good stories, just like old generals, never die – and thanks to Ashley Davies’ Gold, the melodic intrigue of that golden reef has never even had to “fade away.”
Like any good legend, all of this simply dances in the Diesel and Dust of a pretty great Midnight Oil song, because not only are “Beds Burning,” but as the great Kurt Vonnegut once said, “So it goes.”
The final songs complete the tale. “Lost” has tough thoughts etched into unforgiving landscape, with acoustic and electric guitar, percussion and windy ghosts. Finally, “Death” bulges with bass sympathy, a passionate piano, a few cherubic vocals, and a sax solo that pulses an indelible punctuation point on a very lovely album that searches for gold, and somehow, manages to deliver melodic mythological mystery.
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