Back in November 2019, Vincent Carr’s SUMIC released ‘New Paeans’, a complex album blending folk, prog, a touch of world music and a love of Mike Oldfield’s grandness. It was one of the year’s best DIY releases. It was certainly one that 90% of the internet’s prog community would have missed, being busy as they were, whining about the current line up of Yes.
Multi-instrumentalist Vincent Carr released one of the best DIY albums with ‘New Paeans’. Credited to Vincent Carr’s SUMIC, its lengthy multi-layered instrumentals gathered favourable comparisons to Mike Oldfield, while underscoring complex prog rock sounds with a love of pastoral British folk.
For this edition of the Real Gone Sessions, Vincent performs a previously unreleased piece entitled ‘Bamburgh Sands’, inspired by the village of Bamburgh in Northumberland. A simple tune, it carries the traces of Freddie Phillips musical scores that subconsciously influenced work on his earlier record ‘Rekindled’.
Vincent Carr’s fifth album ‘Rekindled’ (released under the name Vincent Carr’s SUMIC in 2016) was one of the year’s most pleasant surprises. Taking influences from Nick Drake, John Martyn, various 70s prog bits and a smidgeon of trad English folk, the album took the listener on a very pastoral musical journey. Traces of Freddie Phillips’ children’s TV scores also added to the album’s very English qualities. It was an album only heard by a relative few, but those who did, invariably loved it.