Oh Contraire! Nick Frater

• 1 Fanfare 01:24
• 2 My Heart's In Stereo 02:22
• 3 I Know You Know I Know 03:00
• 4 Song For The One Eyed City 02:56
• 5 Final Reminder 02:29
• 6 Seraphim Called 04:06
• 7 One Minute 03:19
• 8 Steal Away 03:33
• 9 All Roads Lead To Home 03:46
• 10 Dreaming Of A Wonderland 03:47
• 11 Goodnight, Goodbye 02:37
• Total Runtime 33:19

Info zu Oh Contraire!

Ladies and gentlemen, prepare yourselves for Nick Frater's twelfth studio spectacular, "Oh Contraire" – an album so ambitious it had to be recorded along Glastonbury's ley lines just to contain its power. Picture this: vintage synthesizers performing a circus act on sacred ground, while French horns (courtesy of Brian Wilson Band’s own Probyn Gregory) dance with strings from London's Royal College of Music. It's what happens when a sophisticated-pop architect decides to build a sonic skyscraper using Mellotrons for bricks and harmonies for mortar.

But wait until you hear about the handclaps – guerrilla-recorded in Abbey Road's Studio 2 on a mobile phone, like musical ninjas executing the world's most rhythmic heist. This is an album where Supergrass meets Roxy Music for a motorik dance party, Queen crashes Supertramp's prog picnic, and somewhere, somehow, a pelican gets involved. From the French horn fanfare that kicks things off to the heart-wrenching goodbye that closes the curtain, "Oh Contraire" is what happens when you let a master craftsman loose in a candy store of vintage gear and legendary spaces.

Nick Frater, vocals, keyboards, synthesizer, Wurlitzer, accordion, bass
Alex Lewis, vocals
Dan Johnston, vocals
Jake Smith, vocals, guitars
Lenny Smith, guitars, Electro Harmonix microsynth, Marshall Triple Super Lead
Jamie Whelligan, Korg MS20, Hofner Violin Bass
Lannie Flowers, Rickenbacker 4003 bass, Percussion bass
Cary Grace, EMS VCS3
Probyn Gregory, Yamaha YHR-668N French Horn
Michael Simmons, Hohner bass harmonica
Tom Shotton, drums (3, 5, 6)
Joe Montague, drums, castanets (9)
Luke Smith, drums, vocals (10)
Nick Bertling, drums, Pearl concert toms (4, 7)
Danny Wilkerson, drums (1, 2, 8, 11)
David Horvat, 1st violin
Ana Molnar-Popa, 2nd violin
Charis Morgan, viola
Iza Stefańska, cello

Nick Frater
stands out on a modern pop landscape populated by innumerable prolific self-professed polymaths by virtue of not having to profess anything about himself at all. The critics and tastemakers of the indie-pop world are more than happy to do it for him: his recent release Earworms was 2021's Album of the Year at Powerpopaholic. The previous year's Fast & Loose won Frater a five-star review, and a citation as a “pop tunesmith par excellence,” in Britain's revered Shindig! Magazine. And 2019's Full Fathom Freight-Train earned the Album of The Year honor from International Pop Overthrow, with all three adorning countless other Year's Best lists worldwide: Earworms alone ranked in the Top 20 with pop scene influencers in the US, UK, Canada, Italy, Sweden and Argentina. His new release for 2022, AERODROME MOTEL, is poised to not only follow the same flightpath but to inevitably see Nick soaring to even loftier heights.

British multi-instrumentalist and producer Nick Frater lives in a land of 60s/70s sophisticated-pop, a self-confessed obsession with vintage recording techniques, and a ‘more is more’ approach to production. Based in Croydon, England, Frater’s music has drawn frequent comparisons to Bacharach, as well as Cheap Trick, Jellyfish, The Beatles and Elliott Smith. A prolific songwriter and music creator, Nick Frater has released ten albums over the last decade, all of which have received the type of critical acclaim cited above as well as ever-growing international airplay.

Were his acclaimed adventures in the classic pop idiom not enough to cement his reputation as a true Renaissance Man, recent years have seen Frater release several adventurous side-projects to complement what he calls his ‘normal albums’ each year. There's been 59 Vignettes (2020) - the world’s first Instagram concept album. 59 original miniature songs, accompanied by 59 films made from 8mm footage found in junk shops. And Earworms was accompanied by the beyond-clever meta-satire of The Rebutles (2021), which saw Nick (and some heavy friends) envisioning the solo careers of The Rutles. And this year sees the completion of The Croydon Project (2022) - an illustrated retro-futurist concept album of library-music about his South London hometown’s post-war regeneration.

Proudly immersed in the DIY music scene, Frater has become something of a ‘songwriter’s songwriter’ collaborating with several luminaries of the melodic-rock world such as Roger Joseph Manning Jr (Beck/Jellyfish), Darian Sahanaja (Brian Wilson/Wondermints), Johnny Echols (Love), Mike Randle (Love/Baby Lemonade) and Dana Countryman. Signed to legendary independent label Big Stir Records (his words, not ours!), Nick Frater also works as a producer under the pseudonym Great Sheiks. He has produced albums and projects for artists including Chris Farlowe, The Armoires, Do Me Bad Things, Whelligan, The Sweat, Annexe The Moon, and The Rosemary Works. Frater appears as musician on countless projects, notably as live keyboardist for Love (Forever Changes tours 2019 and 2022), and he even worked a night as Ray Davies’ guitar technician.

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet