Julie Tippetts

Sunset Glow is the 1975 album by Julie Tippetts, a record of songs written almost entirely by her and played by players from the British free jazz and improvised music scene. It sits between song, free jazz and the looser end of English progressive music, and it has never fitted easily into any of them. Originally issued on the small Utopia label, it was hard to find for many years.

Tippetts had first been known as Julie Driscoll, the singer who enjoyed hit records with Brian Auger & the Trinity. She stepped away from that spotlight, recorded the album 1969 and sang in Centipede, the large ensemble led by Keith Tippett, soon to be her husband. For Sunset Glow she wrote seven of the eight pieces and painted the cover. Keith plays piano and harmonium and arranged the opening song. Around them are the alto of Elton Dean, the cornet of Mark Charig, Brian Godding on guitars, Nick Evans on trombone, two bassists and Louis Moholo on drums. George Chkiantz engineered the sessions.

Mind of a Child opens over a warm bed of harmonium, with her piano and voice joined by guitar, sax and cornet in a slow, ceremonial arrangement. The title track, eight minutes long, rests on a repeated piano figure while cornet, tenor horn and Harry Miller's bass drift around her voice, which moves freely between words and pure sound. On Lilies she is alone, layering voices over piano, acoustic guitar and a clay drum into something close to a chant. Shifting Still is an instrumental duet for her acoustic guitar and Keith's piano, and the closing Behind the Eyes (For a Friend, R) sets her voice against two pianos she plays herself. The short Now If You Remember, written by Jessica Constable, is a brief interlude of guitar and stacked vocals.

Writing for Red Bull Music Academy, one critic called it "aqueous and soulful" and noted that Robert Wyatt considers it the female twin of his own Rock Bottom. Reviewing this reissue for Musique Machine, Roger Batty described it as "one of the more surprising, at points daring/ experimental singer-songwriter albums to appear in the 70s".

CD in digipak on Esoteric Recordings (ECLEC2819), 2022, newly remastered by Ben Wiseman, with restored artwork and a 16-page booklet containing the lyrics and an essay by Sid Smith.