Who knows where Daniel Patrick Quinn is right now? Collecting seaweed on the Isle Of Lewis to use as fertiliser in his windswept garden next to the runway of Stornoway Airport, perhaps? Inside that small house, listening to demijons bubbling with home-made raisin wine and plotting more strange music. Or has he once again given up on making music, and headed off along the lines of latitude in search of gamelan and volcanos to climb in Indonesia?
There’s an intensity to Quinn’s new album as One More Grain, Grain Fever that’s quite unlike anything you’re likely to hear this year. ‘Leg Stomper’, described by Quinn as "totalitarian Celidh" featuring shouts of "dosey do" and demanding "complete subservience" is an odd and updated take on Fairport Convention rolling down a hill in a full barrel of cider. It’s a weird record, with rhythms made up of rattles and bangs on Quinn’s kitchen walls, Dr Andrew Blick’s treated trumpet parps and waits, drones that leave and become melodies like sun glinting off cold waters… is that the Ullapool ferry, or a mirage of a low-flying UFO?
With three One More Grain albums under his belts, an EP of covers of traditional songs from ‘Scarborough Fair’ to ‘Giriama Wedding’ and numerous solo records and collaborations, it seems strange that Quinn is still a marginalised figure. Some of that frustration seeps into Grain Fever as, in lolloping meditation on mortality ‘The Scent Of The Gorse Flowers’, he asks if this record will finally be a success.
If Quinn sticks at it I can imagine him suddenly emerging, like Richard Dawson recently has, with a wonderful body of work and everyone rubbing their eyes, wondering how they missed him. For now, here’s a look at Quinn’s inspirations in his Baker’s Dozen feature. Three of these albums, Robert Wyatt’s Rock Bottom and Mike Oldfield’s Hergest Ridge and Nico’s I actually discovered interviewing Quinn around the release of their second album Isle Of Grain – they’ve become firm favourites. Now it seems I need to find a snipe, and hear it drum. Click the picture of Quinn with flowers up his nose to start going through the list.
