Another Fine Day Downloads

If things had gone according to plan, you wouldn't have the chance to hear the new record by Another Fine Day. "AFD was intended to be a one-off," says Tom Green, the one man in this one-man band. AFD's 1994 record Life Before Land was simply an experiment, an attempt to create a gentle... Learn More »

If things had gone according to plan, you wouldn't have the chance to hear the new record by Another Fine Day. "AFD was intended to be a one-off," says Tom Green, the one man in this one-man band. AFD's 1994 record Life Before Land was simply an experiment, an attempt to create a gentle melodic style of ambient music "for post-club chilling." 

Rather, Green found himself with an instant ambient classic. He soonl earned that, as he puts it, "AFD would not be allowed to die quietly." Various festivals and record labels continuously asked for more material and live performances, and AFD tracks were repeatedly used in many compilation CDs. Now, and finally, Green has responded with Another Fine Day's sophomore effort, Salvage. 

The new album draws on English folk songs, southeast African music, acid jazz, and Eno-esque electronic landscapes, without ever settling squarely on any one of them. This is hardly surprising, given the diversity of Tom Green's career. He spent years working as a writer, musician, and producer with such diverse acts as The Orb and the world music band Baka Beyond; his remixes include songs by alternative rockers Primitive Radio Gods and Irish folk legend Donal Lunny. AFD's signature sound, despite the imaginative use of electronic processing and computer software, is defined by the ancient African instrument known in English as the thumb piano. 

Called mbira in Zimbabwe, sanza in Cameroon, and kalimba in Uganda (among other names), this simple set of metal tongues on it's wooden body is considered sacred in some parts of Africa. In putting together Salvage, Tom Green resolved to treat the instrument with respect. "I was determined not to produce a white-boy-plays-traditional-African-music album," he explains, "or a new age tinkles album, or yet another big beats world dance album (this time with thumb pianos)." Instead, he took the term "world music" literally, treating the thumb piano as an instrument as appropriate to Celtic or Western dance music as it is to the Shona rituals of Zimbabwe. 

Fittingly, this decidedly modern album starts with an ancient English song. "Scarborough Fair" begins with a violin playing the familiar melody, then comes a sudden rush of kalimbas and what seems to be a whole carnival of drums, but the melody continues unruffled and unhurried. Very subtle touches of synthesizer and the almost classical-sounding violin and piano make this the first genuinely new arrangement of "Scarborough Fair" since Simon & Garfunkel returned from London with their memorable version some thirty years ago. As if to claim as much musical territory as possible, Another Fine Day immediately follows with "Twisted Standards," an excursion into the world of trip hop and acid jazz. 

The jazzy piano and organ play melodic fragments that almost sound familiar, layers of thumb piano swirl around drums and electronic sounds, and suddenly the question of "what would happen if Dollar Brand met Portishead?" (just in case anyone was wondering) has been answered. The rest of Salvage is similarly eclectic, yet accessible. "Cutting Branches" presents a riot of instrumental colors, many of them apparently acoustic but in reality produced electronically, in a version of a traditional piece of Shona mbira music. "Lost in Space" is a tribute to the Harold Budd/Brian Eno sound of the early 1980's; and "In 5" is an Arabic-flavored brew of odd meters, throbbing bass, mystical ney flutes, and relentless Arab and Indian drums. 

Meanwhile, the kalimbas come and go, sounding like a patter of rain on one track ("Two Kalimbas And A Synth"), or serving as a lead melodic instrument over a bed of overlapping and interlocking rhythms on another (tellingly entitled "Irish In China"). If it's hard to say what Salvage is, it's easy to say what it's not. Tom Green admits to being "disenchanted with the whole world-music-with-beats scene," and recalls that it was his "dissatisfaction with most white pop music of the 80's" that led him to start working with African artists based in London. So while his collaborations with Baka Beyond, The Orb, Hyperborea, and others may have taken him into both the world music and pop music scenes, Green points out that Another Fine Day is neither. "I tried to avoid anything that could be easily categorized as one type of music rather than another," he explains. 

Under the influence of avant-garde American composers Steve Reich and John Cage, Green began exploring "found sounds" and experimental sonic processes. "Salvage is so named because many of the tracks started life completely different from the way they now sound," he says, "being effectively 'new' tracks salvaged from old ones that I decided were just too weird, experimental, plain, and crazy for their own good." While he continues to be a part of what he calls "the Orb planetary system," Green has pursued many other musical projects. 

He's written music for two projects for RTE Television in Ireland, and will be performing as Another Fine Day at this year's Big Chill Festival and later in Greece as well. In the six years since its almost inadvertent beginning, Another Fine Day has become much more than a "one-off." Tom Green's experiment with "accessible, rhythmic, tuneful, and surprising" music has carved a place for itself in a music scene of almost bewildering diversity. Salvage marks it as a place worth visiting.
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