New Zealander Graeme Jefferies and his revolving cast of musicans known as The Cakekitchen seem to have been involved in more underground music scenes than most peoples dogs have had hot dinners. From Graeme´s days in the critically acclaimed early 80´s Flying Nun Records art-band "This Kind of Punishment" through to his gate crashing involvement with the mid 90´s Landsberg-Weilheim scene, and his continued involvement to the present day with some of the people from that connection, he seems to have a knack of popping up every now and again in just the right place.
Graeme´s forever moving forward songwriting project has also accumulated a formidible discography over it´s 10 albums and 15 years on the worlds turntables and enlisted the help of many good musicans along the way. Markus Acher and French percussionist Jean-Yves Douet have both added their distinctive styles to Graeme´s work. The Cakekitchen have released material not only with the credible American independents labels like Merge and Homestead but also European labels Hausmusik and Raffmond. Often a Cakekitchen release can be many years in the oven and there is always a tremendous amount of thought and trouble that goes into each one.
This is certaily true of the latest offering aptly titled "Put Your Foot Inside The Door". Showcasing 10 very different from each other songs, this time with Graeme playing almost all of the instruments himself, its an accumulation of many hours spent working on musical structures and textures and is an on-going labour of love that started to be put together as far back as 1998. Like the critically acclaimed largely solo affair "Messgaes For the Cakekitchen" it manages to feature a wide selection of musical colours. Cellos, violas, backwards and forwards guitars, drums, pianos and also assorted unusual "Off the Wall" instrumentation, like toy guns or Mongolian Throat Singing all seem to find a place somehow in the mix. Viewed as a whole, the songs together, cast a very wide net and somehow set themselves just far enough outside the confines of independent guitar music, or folk, or new country to be interesting as well as original.
The diverse styles and adventurish turn-on-a-dime song structures make for an interesting 51 minute musical adventure that is somehow held nicely together by Graeme´s distinctive guitar playing, curiously inventive songs and original baritone. At some points during the course of album, unexpected musical changes seem to occur as if by magic, such as when busy strings and acoustic strumming rapidly give way to a morning chorus of picking and birdcalls with what sounds like somebody rowing a boat down stream, on the epic "Voyage to the Sun".
From the opening and very danceable Velvet Underground guitar chug of "Strung Out" to the closing cello filled ode "The Hop Hop Song" the new Cakekitchen album is chocked full of interesting stories. The well respected studio wizard Michael Heirath once again worked with Graeme on the mixing of the album. This is the second release of the hopefully on-going winning combination that brought you 2003´s critically acclaimed Hausmusik album "How Can You Be So Blind?" Viewers of the movie "Sonnenallee" may also be pleasantly surprised to hear Graeme´s voice again and be reminded of his warm resonant vocals that featured on the movies title song. Some critcal opinions of previous Cakekitchen releases are as follows:
One of the records of the year in alternative guitar music, Frankfurt Rundsschau; Aug 03 Uplifting Melodies that make you feel warm inside..... a record for those special moments, Spex, Aug 03 Every song is so beautiful that everytime you put it on you have to listen to the whole thing again; Intro, Aug 03
Warm melodies that drip lightly into the soul --- for fans of Nick Drake, Leonard Cohen or Bright Eyes; Prinz, Sept 03 If you were allowed to whittle your own indie rock band, throw in the sound of the late 80´s & early 90´s without sounding retro, you´d probably end up with The Cakekitchen; Suddeutsche Zeitung, May 04 You can take kitten dicks like Joy Division and drown ´em in a river..... a godamn masterpiece; Byron Coley, (Spin; May 93, Messages For the Cakekitchen CD)
