Posts Tagged ‘Reveal Records’

Listen: ‘Save Me (feat: Iggy Pop, Real Life Evolution version)’ by Joan As Police Woman

Posted: 24 September 2026 in Singles and EPs, Recommended Streams and Videos
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Continuing the celebration of her new album Real Life Evolution, released via UK label Reveal Records, NYC singer-songwriter Joan As Police Woman has teamed up with the illustrious Iggy Pop on ‘Save Me’. The track is one of ten fresh interpretations of songs from Joan’s 2006 debut Real Life album, reimagined two decades after its original release with a new cast of collaborators and released exactly 20 years from her debut.

Joan Wasser, known as Joan As Police Woman since 2004, is a critically acclaimed musician and producer, and a sought-after collaborator, dubbed “the coolest woman in pop” (The Times) and “one of the 21st century’s best musicians” (The Economist). As a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, her music defies easy categorization, crafting her own sound that blends various genres.

“Some transformations are subtle. Others are seismic. All of them were made with an entirely new cast of collaborators. Among them are two extraordinary vocalists. The inimitable Iggy Pop — whose band I’ve had the privilege of touring with, playing keys and singing — recorded a stunning version of ‘Save Me’ while we were on the road in New Zealand. We had to work around the birds outside, who apparently had strong opinions about the session. Then there’s Krystle Warren, a true original and one of my favorite singers alive. Her voice is so deeply soulful that ‘I Defy’ feels like it thoroughly enjoyed easily slipping into its brand new groove,” says Joan.

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Music has a way of taking on a life of its own, evolving and revealing new meaning as the years pass. Through countless performances, the new renditions on this extraordinary album are brought to life by the brilliance of the players who helped define their sound. This remarkable opportunity to hear Joan return to the music that helped define her artistic journey brings new perspective, texture, and energy to songs that have already stood the test of time.

“My friend’s reaction when I told them who sang this? “Iggy Fucking Pop”?? And yes, I am lucky enough to have been able to record him in a professional studio in New Zealand (a hotel room next to the pool on a day off). Thank goodness for portable recording rigs," explains Joan Wasser.

“To me, Iggy is one of the great romantics. A few years ago, when I joined his band on Wurlitzer organ and vocals, I began to weep while in rehearsal for ‘The Passenger’. His voice is simply one of the greatest of all time. It holds a commanding masculinity alongside a profound connection to the fully range of human experience. This song carries that same quality I’ve always heard in him: a raw, aching desperation that few singers can touch. I am forever grateful to the "’Godfather of Punk’”.

Real Life anniversary tour dates:

NOV 5  London, UK – Union Chapel
NOV 6  London, UK – Union Chapel
NOV 7  Manchester, UK – RNCM (Royal Northern College of Music)
NOV 9   Glasgow, UK – Oran Mor
NOV 11  Brugge, Belgium – Cactus Club
NOV 12  Amsterdam, Netherlands – Zonnehuis (sold out)
NOV 13  Hamburg, Germany – Mojo Club
NOV 15  Aarhus, Denmark – Train
NOV 16  Copenhagen, Denmark – DR Concert Hall
NOV 18  Budapest, Hungary – House of Music Hungary
NOV 22  Berlin, Germany – Haus des Rundfunks & Großer SendesaalFEB 12  Paris, France – Alhambra
FEB 14  Amsterdam, Netherlands – Zonnehuis
FEB 16  Bremen, Germany – Kulturzentrum Radio Bremen
FEB 17  Heidelberg, Germany – Kulturhaus Karlstorbahnhof
FEB 19  Schorndorf, Germany – Club Manufaktur
FEB 21  Brighton, UK – Komedia
FEB 22  Cambridge, UK – Cambridge Junction (J2)
FEB 23  Norwich, UK – Norwich Arts Centre
FEB 24  Leeds, UK – Howard Assembly Room
FEB 26  Bologna, Italy – Estragon Club
FEB 27  Milan, Italy – Santeria Toscana 31

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Richard J. Birkin – Vigils

Posted: 12 March 2016 in Albums
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Reveal Records – 11th March 2016

Christopher Nosnibor

Vigils comprises a suite of 11 sparse piano-led compositions. As a unit of work, its pace is predominantly sedate; the strings are subtle, graceful, and the mood is thoughtful, reflective. This is very much Birkin’s objective here, and he describes the album as ‘a soundtrack to the idea of looking back at our present from somewhere in the future’. But Vigils is not an album that cries nostalgia. It does not evoke a sense of longing for a future past. But equally, nor does it soundtrack a sense of guilt or a desire to separate from the part. It evokes the passage of time, of retrospection, of ageing, but without resorting to Instagram filters. Vigils is about time, but doesn’t set out to evoke a specific time as such, and in doing so, transcends time.

In context, ‘Accretions’ is surprisingly spirited and uptempo – that isn’t to go so far as to say it’s pop, but the rippling chords and hooky repeated motifs are accentuated with big chords that imbue the piece with a boldness that romps along in a way which is overtly accessible.

‘Moonbathing’ introduces picked acoustic guitar and harmonious vocals while a violin weaves shades of pastoral folk, while the orchestral chamber music of ‘Atomhog’ is sweet, crisp, and uncluttered in its arrangement.

Birkin explains the concept behind the album its artwork by observing that “Significant human evolution is not fast and loud but slow and quiet. So slow that you almost don’t notice it happening. Except when you look back and see changes after they’ve happened…that’s when you see the giant leaps.” Based in Derbyshire, Birkin formulated the album secluded in his isolated residence in an old mill, itself an artefact from a bygone era repurposed for contemporary living.

And while we – that of course is me speaking on behalf of an assumed section of the population right now – often speak of the unbridled pace of change, in real terms it’s all relative. Mobile phone models and laptops may change faster than you can blink, but that’s only superficial change. Lifestyles, attitudes, the big things, change much more gradually, almost imperceptibly. And indeed, it’s during those imperceptible, gradual changes, that the leaps occur.

I daresay that no-one living in the Industrial Revolution felt as though they were living in a period which would come to mark a pivotal period in human history, just as those living in the inter-war or post-war years we likely too busy simply living to consider the present as a period. Similarly, growing up in the 80s never felt like the dawn of the digital age or late capitalism, and there’s very little obvious difference between pre- and post-millennial life as it goes. But in the present, the eighties feel like another life, the sixties and seventies like historical fictions.

Time is but a construct measured in lived experience, and subtly, subliminally, by implication and by simply side-stepping stylistic trappings of past, present or imagined future, Richard J. Birkin captures all of this in a beautiful, poised and soothing collection of work.

 

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Richard J. Birkin Online