Dylan Paul Ware was born and raised in New Zealand, and was exposed to music from a young age as his father was a radio rock journalist who interviewed the likes of Chuck Berry. At home there was a massive record collection, and consequently his tastes in music are very broad indeed (I read a fascinating interview where he lists his favourite albums as Dire Straits’ debut album, NIN’s The Downward Spiral, The Beatle’s Abbey Road, CCR’s Bayou Country, ACDC’s Powerage, Simon & Garfunkle’s The Sounds of Silence, Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series #4 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert 1966 Disk: 1. Metallica’s Master of Puppets, Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother, Led Zep IV, Bert & John, and Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs, quite a mix). He picked up a guitar at the age of 11, and just 8 years later he decided home was too quiet and he would take his guitar and travel. More than a decade ago he settled in Istanbul, where he released a couple of albums as {The Infinity Chamber}, mostly in the folk or alt folk style, until a full band came together for the third release. They were planning for the fourth when they came across a series of issues, not least of which was a certain pandemic.
The line-up had also broken-up by then, so Dylan was wondering what to do when musician friend Simon Dwight suggested why not pull together an album which were all covers of Dylan’s songs? There were already some covers available, and Dylan thought it was an interesting concept so approached a series of musicians asking if they were up for it. The only condition was that they had to record a song released by The Infinity Chamber, but apart from that they could undertake it in any fashion they liked, and there were no limits as to what they could do. It took some time to pull it together, but the result is a 10-track album which comes in at just under 40 minutes.
Having not heard any of the original songs I cannot comment on what changes have been made to the originals, but there is no doubt that my personal favourites are those where it is basically voice and acoustic guitar, and the highlight of these is probably the aforementioned Simon’s take on The Hill, which reminds me somewhat of Nick Harper in the way the guitar is attacked. However, opener Alice by Aysegul Turkoglu has a delicate punkish naive beauty which is incredibly compelling. This type of rendition is quite at odds with some of the others such as The Gates and their version of The Deathcall, which is electro and definitely the sort of music I would listen to for pleasure. There is even a version of No Honey, a single released by The Infinity Chamber only a few months ago, here covered by Utku Uluer with a few guitars.
Unless the listener is already familiar with the material, and is interested in hearing what has been done with it by artists given a totally free rein, then I think it is unlikely they will enjoy the whole album as the styles are incredibly diverse. However, this is definitely worthy of further investigation, and it has certainly piqued my interest in finding out more. I must also mention that Dylan sent me links to various interviews and pieces written on the band, and he has a fascinating story to tell and a compelling way with words.
Rating: 7/10
