The follow up to Hammond Hits, Organ Greats is the second album from Matt Armstrong and Jude Montague. Composed and recorded at their Kings Rd print/music studio at St Leonards-on-sea, Hastings.

TRUST THE DOC: Ed 64: "Montague Armstrong is a duo of Jude Cowan Montague, whose music has featured on my radio and TV shows in several guises, and Matt Armstrong. Their wonderfully named album Organ Greats is their second set recorded in their workshop on Kings Road, St Leonards-on-Sea in Hastings on the East Sussex coast. Jude is also one of the organisers of Scaledown (see article on Page 6) and she is both a presenter and producer for the amazing independent radio station Resonance FM. Did I mention that she is also an accomplished visual artist?

The album has nine tracks, mostly instrumental, and utilises an array of truly classic sounds that take us through a veritable history of the keyboard in popular, film and TV music with a strong sixties sensibility at its core. It is notable that there are times when those timbres take me back to my own childhood (and trust me, that’s a long time ago!), thinking about the music that played in certain parts of programmes I watched on the BBC as a child.

Festival of Saxifrage has wordless vocals backing up part of the melody and adding harmonies to other parts. It’s a bubbly, buoyant opener. Laser Lane could almost be the background music to a scene from Take Hart, swinging and nonchalantly tuneful. The Sprout has a Booker T-ish sassiness while Dragonfly begins with a unison theme before leading into an intriguing lo-fi light music-type piece, the first track to have tangible vocals. It’s quirky and charming. Summerfields is almost entirely in 7/8 time and has some cool scalic melodies and wholesome chords. The Collar swings and a melody revolves around couplets of chords while the bassline plays staccato notes on the beat. With all these tracks there is an air of familiarity about the timbres and atmospheres they create; a subliminal trip through memories of childhood. There is an aura of classic cinema here too.

Love is the only thing opens with a high register melody before Jude’s vocals take centre stage over a bouncy backdrop. Harmonies lift the chorus. Star of the sea introduces a three-time rhythm that takes us through some interesting key modulations with a slightly funereal sounding organ in the ascendancy but also a strings-like figure. Some interesting interplay between the different organs here. Final track Bohemia Row is jaunty and has an appealing melody.

Montague Armstrong bring a fresh, quirky perspective to organ music that is rooted in a great lineage of spy movie themes, classic pop tunes and vintage sounds. Organ Greats is inventive, unique and a lot of fun. I dare you not to fall in love with it." demerararecords.com/trust-the-doc/



WHISPERIN AND HOLLERIN
Jude Montague is one individual who’s not let a global pandemic interfere with her working or creativity. While continuing to occupy regular slots on Resonance FM, a Crumpsall Riddle album emerged in April of 2020, followed by a vinyl pressing of her 2018 collaboration with Matt Armstrong, ‘Hammond Hits’. The pair have now reconvened to deliver more organ-orientated tunes in the form of ‘Organ Greats’.

We’ll get any snickers about the title over with before proceeding further: it’s true that at 46 and with a doctorate, there’s still a part of me that’s still fifteen and amused by Beavis and Butthead, and so here we are, presented with a great organ.

Also, while the job here is to reflect on the music – because book, cover, etc. – I’m particularly pleased to be holding a copy of the CD here, because it’s a really nice object. Not only does the black grooved disc replicate – in miniature – the vinyl experience, but the printed label and the cover art evoke private pressing releases; the front cover has a retro feel with a slightly washed-out pic of the pair surrounded by old gear and a decapitated doll, while the reverse is simple, functional, with a typewriter-style font listing the tracks and running times, and the contributors. The lack of flashiness, the absence of slick-looking contemporary design and print styles is an integral part of the experience, and sets the mood for the music.

Once again, the duo have contrived to conjure a remarkable easy listening experience that’s pure vintage. It would be easy to be convinced that ‘Organ Greats’ was an album from the late 60s or maybe early 70s; the tunes, the product ion, it’s all there, and it’s magnificently realised.

There are no specific touchstone artists as such, and besides, comparisons are so often lazy journalistic shortcuts – to which I’m not entirely averse, bur Organ Greats is greater than that, encapsulating the sound of an era. Thye first of the nine (largely) instrumental compositions, ‘Festival of Saxifrage’ evokes the lilting joys of hippiedom, the summer of love, and blends with, well, all sorts, and not just parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, bringing a richly-scented herbal joy.

Being brief, the pieces run into one another indiscernibly, with bass runs and electronic bleeps blurring the compositions together in a while of experimentalism and joy. ‘Dragonfly’, the album’s longest song, running to almost five and a half minutes, is mellow, breezy, and drifts in and out again on reminiscences of Stereolab, and ‘Summerfields’ breezes in on a faded tint. ‘The Collar’ bounces along nicely with some ascending chord sequences, and everything about ‘Organ greats; is nice and easy.

There’s a feeling of fun running though every track on here, making for an album that feels joyous and jubilant. - Christopher Nosnibor