The Garden of Earthly Delights: by Justin Mitchell
The fact that Justin managed to get such an accomplished sound out of working on his own in a tiny seven-foot room stuffed with intruments makes you wonder what he might have achieved in a full-size studio with a real band at his disposal…
Reviewed by CJ Stone
Justin Mitchell’s album, The Garden Of Earthly Delights, is lovely: funny, quirky, jazzy, funky, surreal and avant-garde all at the same time. It’s like the soundtrack to a drive-in science-fiction zombie movie set in a haunted fairground parked up near Swalecliffe. And that’s just one of the tracks.
More than anything, it is a meditation on mortality and what it means to be bemusedly alive in this cockamamie world of ours. The first track is called Rapture for Rupert and is an ecstatic multilayered fanfare rising to an echoing crescendo. It sets the mood for the rest of the album.
Rupert Hayes. Photo: Lalo Borja. 2008The Rupert in question is Rupert Hayes, of course, Whitstable’s maverick artist who died on July 9 2018. He and Justin were good friends. Rupert’s old studio went up in flames recently, so it’s fitting that Justin’s tribute should…
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