NED COLLETTE - MIXED LIGHT CD

Ned Collette’s asked me to write something about Mixed Light. I put it on a few days when I’d gone heads down, in between bouts of intense concentration and a meeting-rich work environment, and each time I had to stop and focus on one or the other.

Not that Ned’s last two full-lengths Old Chestnut and Our Other History were backgrounders in any sense, but they both had a certain isolationist depth to them, a false sense of inertia that snakes behind your head until it comes time for him to put his hand on your shoulder and redirect your attention. He’s willing to show you his awareness of where the snakes are and what shapes they might take.

Mixed Light throws a lot of that into chance. If I can paraphrase myself here, Our Other History was a record I deemed “peacefully adrift in a bygone era where folk, jazz and down-market environments merge in a loamy, tobacco-stained diorama of love and loss” in my review, something to hold onto while I dealt with my own very true sense of inertia. Ned’s songs and playing reintroduced deep hues into a world that was graying out around me, and if you’re lucky enough to experience any signs of salvation in times like that, you examine it closely, looking for clues to send you back to the realm of the living.