Measure, Pour & Mixtape: Music for Cooking

This is literally a cassette mixtape, limited to 300 copies, although also available digitally. The mechanics of cooking, the sociability of eating, the sonics of preparation, the politics of the kitchen. These are elements that appear among this smorgasbord of artistic approaches. Most selections are either folk or folksy, but there’s also a peppering of electronic works.

The concept is appetising, but many of the contributions don’t stand out, the cream of the crop oddly being the more direct and literal folksome interpretations, such as Michael Hurley singing ‘cook the fish, bake the pie’ repeatedly on ‘Clatskanie’, or the Magic Tuber Stringband on ‘Bill Henseley’s Hoppin’ John’, going for full kitchen hoedown clod-dance, with fiddles, banjo and the close-miked sound of mastication.

Most tracks feature small groups, with minimal equipment, and could easily have been recorded around an intimate kitchen table. Andy McLeod & Sarah Bachman tackle the romantic souring of communal eating invitations, with fragile vocals, guitar and fiddle (‘Whistlin’ Down the Rows’). Sally Anne Morgan (who founded Spinster Records with Emily Hilliard) uses the sound of grain itself, along with fiddle, guitar and small chimes, with vocals of melancholia in ‘Grain Song’. Then Nashville’s Ziona Riley winds the spools tight with ‘Folly of Tomato’, which constitutes Measure, Pour & Mixtape’s most unusual song, appearing from slanted angles, and holding great depth in its mysterious words.