(Art-Pop, Blue-Eyed Soul) [CD] John Martyn - Philentropy (remastered and expanded reissue) - 1983 (1999), FLAC (tracks+.cue), lossless

#77701. Make No Mistake 03:34
02. Don’t Want to Know 04:14
03. Root Love 04:59
04. Lookin’ On 06:01
05. Hung Up 04:32
06. Johnnie Too Bad (Trevor Wilson / Roy Hylton Beckford / Winston Bailey / Derrick Leopold Crooks) 07:50
07. Sunday’s Child 06:02
08. Smiling Stranger 04:28
09. She’s a Lover [bonus track] 05:16
10. All in Your Favour [bonus track] 05:33
11. Step It Up [bonus track] 04:28
12. A Little Strange [bonus track] 05:07
All songs written by John Martyn except for “Johnnie Too Bad.”

Live recordings of 1982-1983 (tracks 1 - 8).
The bonus tracks were earlier combined as Snooo, an EP of demo versions of four songs from the LP And., recorded in 1995. The EP was given away free initially at live shows, and then released by Voiceprint/One World in 1997. For what it is—a few unfinished tracks—it's quite good. The songs flow together very well and are dominated by a bass-heavy groove. The title is taken from a regional pronunciation of the Arsenal soccer team. (Rob Caldwell, AllMusic)
Новообразование филентропия, предложенное Дж. Мартином в качестве заглавия этого выпуска зальных записей, можно перевести как "склонность, любовь к беспорядку или безвозвратному разбрасыванию энергии". Вполне вероятно, что отличавшийся самоиронией Мартин относил вышеупомянутую склонность как к своей бурной биографии в целом, так и к сценическому действу в частности. (DoobieBro)

Singer/songwriter/guitarist John Martyn was born Iain David McGeachy on September 11, 1948, in New Malden, Surrey, and raised in Glasgow by his grandmother. He began his innovative and expansive career at the age of 17 with a style influenced by American blues artists such as Robert Johnson and Skip James, the traditional music of his homeland, and the eclectic folk of Davey Graham (Graham remained an influence and idol of Martyn’s throughout his career). With the aid of his mentor, traditional singer Hamish Imlach, Martyn began to make a name for himself and eventually moved to London, where he became a fixture at Cousins, the center for the local folk scene that spawned the likes of Bert Jansch, Ralph McTell, and Al Stewart. Soon after, he caught the attention of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who made him the first white solo act to join the roster of his reggae-based label. The subsequent album, London Conversation (February 1968*), only hinted at what was to come in Martyn's career. Although it contained touches of blues along with Martyn’s rhythmic playing and distinctive voice, it was for the most part a fairly straightforward British folk record. With his follow-up later that same year, the Al Stewart-produced The Tumbler, Martyn began to slowly test other waters, employing backup musicians such as jazz reedman Harold McNair, to flesh out his sound. His voice also started to take on a jazzier quality as he began to experiment musically.
While on the road, Martyn continued to experiment with his sound, adding various effects to his electrified acoustic. One such effect, the Echoplex, allowed him to play off of the tape loops of his own guitar, enveloping himself in his own playing while continuing to play leads over the swelling sound. This would become an integral part of his recordings and stage performances in the coming years. He also met Beverley Kutner, a singer from Coventry who later became his wife and musical partner. The duo released two records in 1970, Stormbringer and The Road to Ruin, the former recorded in Woodstock, N.Y. with American musicians including members of the Band. For one track on their second album, John and Bev hired Pentangle double bassist Danny Thompson, who remained a constant in John’s career throughout the better part of the ’70s, on-stage and in the studio. John planned his third solo album when Beverley retired to take care of the couple's children, although there was supposedly pressure from Island for him to record on his own.
The next couple of years saw Martyn continuing to expand on his unique blend of folk music, drawing on folk, blues, rock, and jazz as well as music from the Middle East, South America, and Jamaica. His voice continued to transform with each album while his playing became more aggressive, yet without losing its gentler side. Bless the Weather (1971) and Solid Air (1973) which helped form the foundation of Martyn’s fan base, featured some of his most mature and enduring songs: “Solid Air,” written for close friend Nick Drake, “May You Never” (recorded by Eric Clapton), and “Head and Heart” (recorded by America). By the time of 1973’s Inside Out, Martyn’s use of the Echoplex had taken on a life of its own while his vocals became more of an instrument: deeper and bluesier, with words slithering into one another, barely decipherable.
During this period, Martyn’s well-publicized bouts with alcoholism came to the forefront and began to affect his career somewhat. He became an erratic and at times self-destructive performer. He might perform an evening of electronic guitar experiments for a crowd of folkies or a set of traditional, acoustic ballads when playing to a rock audience. His shows would also range from the odd night of falling over drunk to sheer brilliance, as captured on the independently released Live at Leeds (1975).
Following Sunday’s Child (1974), the live record, and a 1977 best-of collection, Martyn, for the most part, abandoned his acoustic guitar on record for a sort of rock, world, and jazz fusion. Although his style was moving away from its folk roots, his songs retained the passion and structure of his best early work. Grace and Danger (1980), his first release since 1977’s One World, painfully and honestly depicted the crumbling of John and Beverley’s marriage in some of his most powerful material in years. It also seemed to garner interest in Martyn’s sagging career. With this new momentum and the help of friend Phil Collins, Martyn signed to WEA, where he recorded two records, Glorious Fool (1981) and Well Kept Secret (1982). Glorious Fool, a superb effort, produced by Collins and featuring Eric Clapton on guitar and Collins on drums, piano, and vocals, looked to be his best shot at mainstream success, but failed to extend his cult status. Martyn released his second independent live record, the magnificent Philentropy, before returning to Island Records for two studio releases, a live album and a 12" single which featured a version of Bob Dylan’s “Tight Connection to My Heart.” He was dropped by the label in 1988.
Continuing to battle his alcoholism, Martyn resumed his career in 1990 with The Apprentice and 1992’s Cooltide. He also released No Little Boy, the album of his classic songs re-recorded with an all-star cast featuring Phil Collins, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, and Levon Helm of the Band, as well as various compilations and live recordings. After a four-year layoff, Martyn issued And, an album with strong jazz, trip-hop, and funk overtones, followed in 1998 by The Church with One Bell, a collection of diverse covers. In 1999 he also released a live double album which documented a classic concert at London’s Shaw Theatre in 1990 entitled Dirty, Down & Live.
Martyn recorded a surprise studio comeback effort called Glasgow Walker at the turn of the century that was very well received, and had his entire Island catalog remastered and reissued—two of his albums, One World, and Grace and Danger, were given the Universal “deluxe” treatment with bonus discs**. In 2003, a cyst burst in Martyn’s leg due to septicemia brought on by diabetes. The end result was an amputation, but he continued to tour the world with the same tireless energy and restlessness, performing with his band from a wheelchair. Martyn, shrugged it all off, typified by this infamous quote: “I’ve been mugged in New York, and luckily I fought my way out of it. I’ve been shot a couple of times as well, but I just lay down and pretended to be dead.”
In 2007 two DVDs appeared, a Live at the BBC set recorded in the 1970s, and Voiceprint’s The Man Upstairs documentary. 2008 saw Martyn’s name surface once more with some real regularity due to a flurry of activity by the man and his touring schedule, but also because of new releases. His One World label issued a pair of catalogued live dates, the best of these being Simmer Dim, and, in December, Universal/Island released a four-disc retrospective box entitled Ain’t No Saint. In January, 2009 Martyn was awarded the OBE (Order of the British Empire)—an irony since he was the most rebellious of Scotsmen. Martyn’s health, however, was in real decline as a result of a lifetime of substance abuse issues; in the early morning hours of January 29, 2009, he passed away at the age of 60 after a third bout with pneumonia.
With his characteristic backslap acoustic guitar playing, his effects-driven experimental journeys, or his catalog of excellent songs, as well as his jazz-inflected singing style, John Martyn will remain an important and influential figure in both British folk and rock. (Brett Hartenbach, AllMusic)
*October 1967 is listed as the release date of the debut LP, according to another source (see the enclosed booklet)
**Two more releases have been issued as “deluxe”: Solid Air (2009) and Live at Leeds (2006)

Hung Up On Hypertrophy
There are those—and they are many in today’s athletic Popular-hypertrophic music field—who can impress a vocal line upon a certain heavily overworked, resonant back-tracking; but mostly they lack, in their build, in their brassy confidence, the ease which seems to mark out the etemaisinger. . . Someone, who—seemingly cut out for nothing other than singing—endures, whose song breathes: a song not necessarily filled with remarks, which cuts free.
This is not to preclude the likelihood of wounds, of breaks, of tears, breakers, mistakes, giveaways—for all these may go towards the resilient economy of their singing. True, false, truly not of this world or truly awful, questions of time do not bother or erode, interrupt or interpret these waits, pirates—who sing not of facts but of figures. Thus, John Martyn: a balancing act. Legend as much for vice as voice, “Oh Johnnie you’re too bad,” forever off on the same rails, trails, tales, sometimes susceptible to a certain kind of strung out stringing along, and then again, sometimes a thousand years of voice, John Martyn: a tale of what it takes to set the voice free.
Then, for now, this Philentropy, unannounced, apparently from out of nowhere. John Martyn and musicians troupe, touch jazzy, softly sharply recorded in three English places, ’82 and ’83. Shuffling around, memories of songs concentrated or consecrated (his business), elliptically, unearthed. For a moment, as always, you have to hesitate before the start of the Live Album—but Philentropy slips in so quietly, without fanfare, that the seclusion seduces. Not in terms of an escape from the “pressures” of today’s ghastly glamour, not a nostalgic plea for the restoration of “old” values (the troubador as a more authentic voice; definitely not) . . . because a Martyn, at any time, is obviously far more shifty, shifting, unstable, impermanent, permeable, than most of today’s end-of-the-peer show. In Martyn there is always a shade or a universe more of the rupture, the unsanitary and inhuman condition, ignition, impulse, insanity and polymorphous perversity (!yes!) of pop. . . than in any old Marilyn (such an event, such a person, will never bear the fruit, the child, the nought, the disembodied neuter of a Buckled or Martynated voice).
Then there are the accrued implications of a Martyn signifying something of a stasis, some “comfort,” some unreconstituted pre-’76 ZigZaginess, some spectre of age’s approach on the perpetual adolescence of Pop. But just look at today’s: could there be anything further from a Tim Buckley or John Martyn in its propriety, tastefulness, decorum, good sense, Sobriety, cleanliness? We might well recall that Buckley, the voice that left behind the world to become Starsailor, and could then only fail—with all the most sublime ease left in the world—back into the cast of worldly songs, and things. So, too, John Martyn.
The troubador continues to stand singing in the shadow of their volcano, that they might never scale them again is unimportant—and we shouldn’t demand any explanation. Out of their own laws they broke, and every then and again they re-procureffi eir trespass.
So, officially, of this perhaps unofficial recording, I can tell you that you will find a Martyn’s voice stretching itself far more than the last official time it was released—on last year’s WEA Well Kept Secret (whose “Hung Up” receives a most beautiful, superior, rendering here).
So, now and here, to hear this ’82-83 John Martyn is to hear a voice that, even in lullaby, pulls towards an unfamiliar, irrational, and—above it all—corporeal slumber. So, plied: some northern comfort, slow sharps, sudden deaths (the dramatic elongation—from its Perryfied forest state into a series of plateaux—of ‘Johnnie Too Bad’), songs of a man’s luxuriante in the sum of his pasts and some of his presents, projected as a poisonous howl or besotted slur; in his clown’s coat, and his sick bed; as a devil’s vocalist who satiates the angels.
The voice shows time its door—back into the body and released again, “hear the voice say, come…” John Martyn, his balancing art: sometimes a perfect suspension. (Ian Penman, New Musical Express, 3 December 1983; https://www.johnmartyn.com/album-reviews/philentropy/)

John Martyn: vocals, guitar
Alan Thompson: bass guitar
Jeffrey Allen: drums
Danny Cummings: percussion
Ronny Leahy: keyboards (Brighton & Oxford)
Produced by John Martyn