Picchio dal Pozzo - Picchio dal Pozzo

To round out this week's Canterbury Scene focus, here's one of the best examples of how the scene's sounds eventually transcended their geographical and physical origins, and a few even more obscure groups in Europe carried the Canterbury influence in an expanded and often quite interesting and artistically successful direction.  On their 1976 eponymous debut, Italian group Picchio dal Pozzo manage to fuse the gentle synth atmospheres and vocalizing of solo Robert Wyatt with space rock jams not unlike those of mid-70s Gong, all the while sticking to a very Canterburian classical-jazz instrumentation that's heavy on flute, xylophone, oboe, keyboard and fuzzed-out bass and guitar.   

Like so many of my very favorite albums, part of what I love about this album is simply how the music sounds--from the first fade-in acoustic guitar notes of "Merta" the tone of this album is like a warm bath--enveloping, soothing and somehow comforting in spite of its more challenging moments.  Though it's easy to trace this group's influences to Canterbury, there's something about their hazy, dreamy sound and penchant for mischievous wordless vocals that is totally their own.  "Cocomelastico" follows with a direct segue into an awesome-sounding guitar/saxophone counterpoint melody underpinned by layers of spacey synths and some sort of twisted lounge music with suitably gently goofy singing.  As you can see from the lyrics provided on the band's official website, the few words to these songs are mostly nonsense and whimsical wordplay; perhaps one of the Canterbury scene's greatest strengths in terms of longevity is that, unlike most progressive bands, its groups never seemed to take themselves too seriously!

The album's darkest track and arguably its centerpiece is the magnificent "Seppia," beginning with a minor ostinato and some well-chosen dissonant note pairs in the bass before stating a dramatic oboe-led melody and dropping into on of the most deliriously hypnotic fuzz bass riffs in Canterbury history for a synth/xylophone/vocal jam that lasts a good six minutes before dropping suddenly into a quietly avant-garde flute/xylophone/bass trio and closing the tune with some spoken word and a stately, mysterious reed-led section.  The number of sudden surprises, dynamics, details and layers of beauty in a track like this are my total ideal--it's at once accessible and traditionally melodic, while at the same time playing with dissonance and bizarre choices.  The genius of Picchio dal Pozzo's approach seems to be their use of gentle instruments and textures to explore these potentially grating musical moves; they're not going to offend anybody too blatantly, but if you pay attention you realize that there's a lot more going on here than it might initially appear.

"Napier" and the rest of the tracks present more densely-packed, swiftly-moving ideas, quirky but accessible melodies and almost narcotic timbres.  While the last couple of tracks are perhaps less obviously memorable in terms of melody and structure, their humble beauty does improve with further listening and the texture and atmosphere suits the rest of the album's mood so well that the disc trails off in a dreamy whisper that makes me want to start over immediately.  Though it can be argued that the heavy Canterbury influences make Picchio dal Pozzo's debut a bit derivative, as far as I'm concerned we could do with a few more great Canterbury albums and the quality of this music is so consistent and the atmosphere is so uniquely dreamy that it really doesn't bother me; sometimes doing something really well trumps doing something first, and you'll often find there are subtle wrinkles of originality hidden within.

Picchio dal Pozzo is one of my favorite Canterbury albums and is probably favorite Italian progressive album (though there are only a few Italian progressive groups who have actually clicked with me; Stormy Six, Area and Museo Rosenbach and maybe one or two others who manage to do more than rehash the less interesting aspects of symphonic prog).  I'm also really excited to say that this album is back in print on CD--just reissued by Italy's Goodfellas label at the end of 2011.  Now I can review it guilt-free and point you to one of my favorite online storefronts, Recommended Records, as a great place to purchase this CD and support these artists. Obviously, this album is highly recommended, as is the group's second and final studio release, the more challenging and RIO-flavored (but equally rewarding) Abbiamo tutti i suoi problemi, which has been consistently commercially available--more on that album later!

Hatfield and the North - Hatfield and the North

To delve further into the dense stuff of the Canterbury Scene, Hatfield and the North's 1974 debut is a great place to explore how the scene evolved both personnel-wise and sound-wise as the 70's wore on.  By this time Soft Machine was firmly on a jazz-heavy fusion route, with Robert Wyatt long-since departed, finished with his next project Matching Mole, a paraplegic and releasing his first masterpiece, Rock Bottom, the same year.  Gong and Caravan were already very different bands, with drummer Pip Pyle gone from Gong (to drum for Hatfield and the North) and guitarist Steve Hillage added to the fold, and bassist Richard Sinclair departing Caravan, also to work with the Hatfields.  By the time of this album's recording, the core group was rounded out by Egg (among other groups) keyboardist Dave Stewart and Matching Mole/Delivery guitarist Phil Miller.  My intention isn't to get overly cluttered with names and group references, but rather to show just how intermingling the Canterbury Scene was (and continues to be, to some extent)--Hatfield and the North can in some ways be considered the first Canterbury supergroup as it was formed from members who had already demonstrated their abilities on the classic albums of other Canterbury groups.

Sound-wise, Hatfield and the North amply demonstrates how the Canterbury sound continued to get more sophisticated, more refined, and jazzier.  Unlike mid-70's Soft Machine (or the trace jazz elements found in Caravan, for example), Hatfield and the North's debut sound is one of fusion of jazz harmony, complex composition and improvisation with appealing, gentle melodies.  The complexity of these compositions is far from the relative pop-simplicity of Caravan's songs, yet Richard Sinclair seems to have no trouble accommodating his bass skills to the material.  And don't think that this group is just going to sound like a summation of all the things the members did before--this album is rife with seamless transitions and sub-one-minute segue tracks, and the mission of the vocals (the lyrics for which are mostly tongue-in-cheek nonsense) seems to be to give listeners an accessible insertion point into what's often complex and difficult-to-get-the-first-time music.

Though it's not his group, per se (at least not as much as later incarnation National Health was), Dave Stewart's keyboards provide the most noticeable framework for this music--fluidly transitioning between Rhodes electric piano, Hammond organ, various synthesizers and acoustic piano to provide both texture and melodic substance.  "Son of 'There's No Place Like Homerton'" boasts some of the most Egg-like contrapuntal puzzle keyboard of the album, with a complex, ever-shifting atmosphere abetted by airy, ethereal contributions of the "Northettes" (background singers Barbara Gaskin, Amanda Parsons and Ann Rosenthal, who also contributed to Egg's Civil Surface album, released the same year).  Robert Wyatt guest vocalizes on "Calyx," eventually joined by Richard Sinclair in a delicate, wordless duet.  It's these kinds of complex but unassuming moments that make Hatfield and the North's two albums so rewarding on repeated listens.

I have to admit that it took me quite a few before my attitude shifted from mere respectful appreciation to all-out enthusiasm--I'm beginning to think that there's something about the language of jazz harmony that's fundamentally different from that found in most rock and pop--you have to have to acquaint yourself a certain amount with it before it stops just sounding like silly noodling and the multiple facets possible with extended harmony start to shine through.  The songs here don't often "rock out" (even by Canterbury's gentle standards), and the often major-key extended harmonies are much more reminiscent of later smooth jazz music than their darker minor counterparts being explored by Soft Machine and Henry Cow.  The band does manage to get pretty uptempo and a little more aggressive in sound on the fast-paced "Rifferama," which features Gong saxophonist Didier Malherbe and on which Dave Stewart coyly quotes the "I Never Glid Before" melody.  "Shaving is Boring" is likely the album's most epic composition, treading some darker territory with some Mahavishnu Orchestra-like ostinato patterns, gnarly Canterbury fuzz organ and an uncharacteristically distorted and noticeable contribution from Phil Miller's guitar (we won't quite get to see him cut loose until National Health's Of Queues and Cures, which fulfills all of Hatfield and the North's promise and then some).  Richard Sinclair does his best Robert Wyatt in the vaguely sexual "Licks for the Ladies," displaying that his sometimes subdued vocals aren't without a considerable amount of nuance.  He also manages some of the album's funniest quirky Canterbury nonsense vocals when "Big Jobs No. 2" recapitulates the second track with metacommentary on the band's hopes for commercial success.

It's interesting to see how all of these Canterbury figures continued to develop their distinct but collective musical visions while at the same time working for some kind of commercial success.  As the band morphed into National Health and progressive music became less and less popular in the late 70's, it became clear that the golden days of having label support and a mouthpiece through which to broadcast these ideas were drawing to a close.  Luckily several of these musicians have soldiered on to make more worthwhile music, but we also have a legacy of densely enjoyable recordings and ideas to engage in the present.  This album is warmly recommended along with the band's sophomore effort The Rotters' Club, as well as National Health's self-titled debut and the aforementioned Of Queues and Cures--more thoughts on those records later!

Get it here.

Caravan - In the Land of Grey and Pink

It's been a while since I've written about any Canterbury Scene bands, and I'd still like to further explore how the music has expanded past its original physical scene into a recognizable style, but also what it was like when the style and membership of the scene was still concentrated in just a few bands.  You can't do that without talking about Caravan, which--aside from Soft Machine--probably has the most members closely tied with the early Canterbury Scene.  Like Soft Machine, Caravan started in the late 60's, boasting members from the formative Canterbury band Wilde Flowers.  Also like Soft Machine, Caravan was instrumental in defining what has come to be known as the Canterbury sound, although in a considerably different way from the Softs.  Even at its early poppiest, Soft Machine's sound was always firmly rooted in jazz, while I'd say Caravan is more tied to psychedelic rock with some elements of jazz and progressive, and by most accounts they perfected this distinctive blend with this, 1971's In the Land of Grey and Pink.

In case you were worried, the bouncy opener, "Golf Girl" assures us of this album's origin--the trombone, flute, juiced-up organ and goofy lyrics ("on the golf course/we talk in Morse") are undeniably Canterbury.  Compared with Soft Machine, though, this is definitely rock, and while it seems Robert Wyatt was mostly just screwing around (albeit quite entertainingly) with his lyrics, there's a sincerity with Richard Sinclair's words and delivery that adds a dimension of warmth to Caravan's whimsy.  "Winter Wine" turns a 180, with a psychedelic folk bent and a bunch of fantasy imagery that seems to support the album cover (which, by the way, is fucking awesome--I want to go there).  Though Sinclair's vocals do seem a little inconspicuous on first listen, a surprising amount of nuance becomes apparent when you come to learn the songs a bit better.  The mutual Canterbury influence is apparent in how he and guitarist/vocalist Pye Hastings make up a sort of two-man approximation of Wyatt--Hastings' vocals rest in the thin, upper register Wyatt treads so often (check out the delirious cowbell pop of "Love to Love You (And Tonight Pigs Will Fly)", while Sinclair's lower range seems to prefigure the fragile humility so often found in Wyatt's post-Soft Machine work. 

The title track revisits the "Golf Girl" feel with some more stoner-hippie-fantasy-nonsense imagery ("we'll pick our fill of punk weed and smoke it it till we bleed--that's all we'll need") as well as some sparkling piano and a great organ solo.  I find it interesting how the band employs a classic Canterbury (Mike Ratledge) innovation like the fuzz organ, but use it in a totally different way.  This brings me to the epic, side-long closer "Nine Feet Underground," which assures us without a doubt that Caravan's lead solo instrument is Dave Sinclair's organ.  While the other Canterbury groups are no strangers to long solos, Caravan seems content to set up a fairly straightforward rock riff-based jam and allow Dave Sinclair to stretch out with several minutes-long organ solos.  While it's a repetitive approach and Sinclair's style is nowhere near as technically erudite as Mike Ratledge's or Dave Stewart's, for example, there's something about Caravan's hazy/catchy psychedelic atmosphere and the tone and Sinclair's tone and note choice that just clicks perfectly.  It's amazing how well a 22 minute-long song can mostly subsist on jams and organ solos (though Pye Hastings and Richard Sinclair each contribute a vocal section) but I think it owes to memorable, melodic chord progressions and Sinclair's willingness to effectively alter the tone and effects of his instrument to expand his ideas and change up the palette.  The song's conclusion pits barnstorming riff sections against some of Sinclair's most groovily aggressive soloing (though some say it rips of "Sunshine of Your Love," I'm not sure Cream can really lay creative claim to an entire musical interval--suffice to say the two riffs are similar-sounding and Cream's came first).  Amazing--that is, if you like longform jamming.

It seems there's a Canterbury Scene band for every mood and season (well, not really, but the scene demonstrates surprising depth while still conveying a distinctive sound), and for me Caravan is the catchiest, most mainstream of the lot, which is probably why they remain one of the bands who is more often discovered by younger listeners, even achieving mention in Mojo, which sports nary a mention of most other Canterbury luminaries, except Robert Wyatt, who seems to show up several times an issue these days.  This album is warmly recommended to psych/prog fans as well as Canterbury disciples, and it's worth mentioning that If I Could Do It All Over Again, I'd Do It All Over You and Caravan for Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night are nearly as rewarding.

Get it here, or deluxe here.

Please enjoy the back cover, too:

Gryphon - Red Queen to Gryphon Three

Some progressive albums from the 1970's sound like the compositions could be played in the present and might actually manage to sound a little more modern, while others remain permanently tied to the time of their origin.  British group Gryphon's 1974 third album is surely one of the latter category, and a perfect choice to end the relative drought of progressive material here.  Listening to this album is like burying your head in a synthesized pillow of 70's renaissance heaven. 

Among the numerous progressive groups of similar ambitiousness, Gryphon are distinguishable (on this album at least) for eschewing vocals entirely and utilizing crumhorns, a Renaissance-era woodwind that imbues the band's backward-looking style with some aural authenticity.  Looking at the band's credits, though, it's not a huge surprise they're adept at accommodating the crumhorn--the horn is double-reeded, and Brian Gulland spends half of his time in the group playing bassoon.  Unsurprisingly considering these guys' academic credentials, the virtuosic level of musicianship is one of the album's strongest characteristics.

Compositionally, Gryphon has to be one of the most classically-influenced contemporary progressive groups, neatly folding Renaissance and especially Baroque influences into their songs while still pumping up the amplification with electric guitar and bass, drums and some well-arranged synth parts.  The album's "Opening Move" boasts some of the dreamiest instrumental passages, utilizing gorgeous but tense chord progressions, and juxtaposing a twinkling group sound very much influenced by passages in similar Yes songs with interlocking contrapuntal sections similar to those often explored by Gentle Giant.  Unlike Yes and Gentle Giant, though, Gryphon rarely breaks past the Baroque atmosphere into a more contemporary rock sound.  In some ways, they don't have to because their vocal-free sound doesn't pose the problem of matching lyrics and vocals to such an academic sound, but it's also because they're exploring the fusion of classical and rock to a much deeper extent.  The ebb and flow of tempo and energy in "Opening Move" is abetted by the development of a strong melodic motif and showcases of the band's multi-instrumental talents.

"Second Spasm" features the most overt rock sounds of the album, with the bass and guitar doubling on a boisterous and satisfying progressive riff after a couple of the most intricate Medieval and Baroque passages of the album.  As might be reasonably inferred from its title, "Lament" is the requisite quiet piece, which seems slightly unnecessary considering even most of the mid-tempo pieces here are fairly mellow.  By the time the album closes with "Checkmate," it's apparent that the group's arrangements--replete with synth/piano double runs and multi-flute harmonies--are the album's greatest asset.  While some of the melodies are unmemorable even after numerous listens, there's always joy to be found in the spaces between the multiple simultaneous sounds, and it's clear the band took great care with keeping the sections of their extended pieces constantly on the move and heading toward the next surprising combination.  While the band's sound is uncommercial by even progressive standards and the album will always sound hopelessly dated, this kind of music will always sound great to the converted and acts as a cheerful reminder that there was once a time when bands making music like this could land a record deal and at least have a shot at success.

Get it here.

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention - One Size Fits All

While his skills as a composer and guitarist are self-evident on everything I've ever heard by him, Frank Zappa hasn't ever really clicked with me as a personal favorite.  I think it might have something to do with the tension between his obvious seriousness and discipline as a composer and player but the apparently complete lack of seriousness when it comes to thoroughly crafting an album or imbuing his songs with anything but the most lightweight of messages.  I know, I know--it's just how Zappa is, but the slapdash composite of dense jazz rock, rock and roll parody and novelty song that makes up most of his fans' favorite albums just hasn't satisfied me to the point of admitting that any of them are really great.

One Size Fits All is about as enjoyable as others I've heard, though.  The dense, twinkling jazz rock that initiates the album with "Inca Roads" is my favorite part; these compositions are fluid, full of little ostinati and vibraphone/vocal runs that precariously and quickly speed through a jaw-dropping number of notes.  Zappa could always build a band, and in terms of musicianship, there are virtually no chinks in the armor here, especially in the rhythm section.  For his part, Zappa's playing runs the typical mix of able but jammy blues-inflected lead guitar interspersed with some more interesting standout ideas.  For example, his fun but repetitive fuzz solo on "Po-Jama People" sounds really familiar, while the twiddly clean riff near the end of "Sofa No. 1" sounds like only Zappa could have written it.  Obviously, I prefer the more peculiar and idiosyncratic stuff, and there's at least an adequate amount of it here, thanks to the late-game clutch pull of "Andy," with more ridiculous vocal arrangements, freely-flowing ideas, and a little bit of atypical guitar playing. 

Though I don't really find the songwriting especially consistent, the sound on this album definitely is--wide open, major seventh, ninth and eleventh chords give the music a happy feel and provide a lot of roaming territory for the vocalists, which are another strength--Zappa's proficient but limited voice is aided quite ably by some of the African American members of his band, including a welcome guest appearance by Johnny "Guitar" Watson on "San Ber'dino," which almost sounds like ELO (sorry, bigtime Zappa fans!).  As a much bigger fan of groups from the Canterbury scene (most of which are undeniably influenced by Zappa's earlier work), I can hear traces of Hatfield and the North in some of this album's intricate jazz rock, but the idea of a group from Canterbury managing to successfully include black American music in their blend is laughable.  In this way, Zappa is to Canterbury almost like extreme fascism is to extreme communism--almost the exact same thing, but somehow fundamentally and permanently separate.  For me, at least, the Canterbury bands usually did a better job of looking at the big picture and creating really solid albums, even if the music gets a little darker and less "fun," and for some reason I find their sense of humor more compelling.  And the problem for me with Zappa's idea of fun, on this album, at least, is that most of the songs are merely just goofy and rarely cross over into a level of humor that actually makes me laugh--"Po-Jama People" seems to be trying to be satirical but the identity of Zappa's actual target remains a mystery to me, while the punchline to all of the verbosity on "Evelyn, A Modified Dog" is merely "arf."  I thoroughly understand that Zappa's "I don't give a shit" attitude is deliberate and is precisely what a lot of people love about his music, but for me it's more attractive in theory than in practice.  He does come close, though, on the rock and roll bum send-up "Can't Afford No Shoes" with "maybe there's a bundle of rags that I can use."

Maybe I just need to keep sorting through the favored albums of the Zappa-converted for a couple more to help me really appreciate the man's music and humor, but for now I prefer the more successful satire of We're Only in It for the Money and Hot Rats is still my go-to for concentrated playing and compositions.  Recommendations welcome!

Get it here.

Van Der Graaf Generator - Pawn Hearts

Though Robert Fripp and King Crimson are probably most widely-known as the dark lords of 70's progressive rock, I think Peter Hammill (who I've already introduced with Over) and Van der Graaf Generator do a better job of combining an ominous sound with focused lyrics that actually conceptually match that dark sound.  I won't go into the group's needlessly convoluted history, but suffice to say that this was the last of the first four of their albums recorded before the band went on effective hiatus until their other masterpiece, 1975's Godbluff.  Amongst the landscape of 70's prog bands, Van der Graaf Generator are known for being one of the best bands to largely avoid guitar in favor of a sound that combines unusually aggressive-sounding keyboards (Hugh Banton) and saxophone (David Jackson).  The group additionally distinguished itself by being much more successful in Italy than in its native Britain, and by having a few of the worst-realized album covers in all of the progressive boom (and that's really saying something).

In my view, Pawn Hearts makes good on the promise of its predecessors, especially H to He Am the Only One, insofar as the band manages to flesh Hammill's lyrical and songwriting vision more cohesively and provide some of the most interesting, intense and engaging music they'd so far committed to tape.  As I've kind of already mentioned, Peter Hammill is the deal-breaker for Van der Graaf Generator--you either like his balls-to-the-wall, theatrical, choirboy-cum-chainsaw vocals and find his perpetual interest in the blurry borders between psychology, metaphysics and science fiction compelling, or you simply don't.  For me, his style is so original and varied that I'd probably like it even if I didn't find it aesthetically appealing, though I do occasionally feel he treads familiar lyrical thematic pathways a little too often (isolation being one).  So, the Van der Graaf Generator sound is often expressed using Hammill's vocals as the prime melodic device, placing especial emphasis on his words and the drama of his delivery.

Like so many hallmark 70's prog albums, Pawn Hearts consists of only three tracks.  The first two, "Lemmings" and "Man-Erg" could accurately be described as refined summations of where the band had already been.  "Lemmings" is a sweeping expression of the album's concepts, describing mankind as lemmings rushing toward a clifftop.  After a brief atmospheric introduction featuring Hammill's understated acoustic guitar strumming, the band launches into an odd-meter unison riff (one of their most distinctive devices) that powerfully joins Hammill's voice with the organ and saxophone.  I'll readily admit that most everything Hammill writes is dark to the point of dourness and humorlessness, but I'll be damned if the hairs on the back of my neck don't stand up on end every single time I hear him sing "There is no escape except to go forward!"  Though the subject matter is bleak, I think there's far too few lyricists willing to face up and address the particulars of humankind's ultimate destination and looming self-destruction.  Not that they need necessarily be addressed so grandiosely or even darkly at all, but for me it's a refreshing change of pace from the blithe escapism offered by most pop music.  Across the song's mottled landscape (there are all kinds of great singular moments built into the composition) Hammill's desperation grows to the point that he pleads, "What choice is there left to die/in search of something we're not quite sure of?"  The song's rousing middle section combines an interlocking riff based on Jackson's dual saxophone (he'd play two at once) and Banton's juicily-overdriven organ.  By the time the song winds back around to its recapitulation and climax, it's apparent that Hammill's outlook isn't quite as pessimistic as it originally appeared--in the face of an indifferent universe, he decides, "What choice is there left but to live/In the hope of saving our children's children's little ones?"  The humanistic message rings in the air over one of my favorite parts of the song in which two of the melodic themes overlap and repeat, warping each time into an uncertain haze, musically complicating Hammill's conclusion.

"Man-Erg," perhaps best described as a power ballad, weaves a well-trod style for the band with the Pawn Hearts concept (which I interpret to generally encompass the unsure and unstoppable motion of the human race and each human's seemingly insignificant role in it--both externally and metaphysically).  As the lyrics quote from the band's earlier works (both "Killer" and "Refugees"), Hammill passionately treads the floorboards over his dual nature as a killer and an angel, eventually realizing that he encompasses all aspects of human nature.  The song's deliberate but anthemic pacing as well as another aggressive and dissonant middle section with some frenetic vocals set the track apart from some very similar earlier ballads in the group's history, and some jazz harmony in the second half adds a welcome dimension to the relatively straightforward ballad style.

"A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers," the album's 23 minute-long second half, is predictably less focused.  The epic track trades straightforwardness for some of the album's most spacious atmosphere, though, and it's also got some of the most musically progressive composition of the band's entire output.  I've heard a number of listeners write the song off as directionless, which I think is easy to do when a song is over 20 minutes long--personally, I think it takes quite a few plays and some close attention before songs like this really open up and I try to withhold judgment until I've at least listened enough to recall from memory the song's general structure and some of the melodic elements.  If I'd written this review six months ago (even after having heard it many times over the course of two years), I'd be far less kind to this song, but I've come to appreciate its many nooks and crannies, wealth of melodic ideas and repeated brazenness much more in the interim.  I still don't feel like I've got a strong grip on the lyrical subject matter (the beauty of forming a long term relationship with good albums), but I think the song's strengths certainly outweigh its weaknesses, with some breathtaking unison arpeggios, some of the most searing dissonance on the album, and some genuine scariness.  I would say, though, that the 70's progressive period did produce a few more cohesive epics; "Lighthouse Keepers" at times plays like several nearly-a-song sections interspersed with musically interesting but somewhat unrelated vignettes.  For an epic of this length, I'd hope for a little more unified purpose, but the parts are of high enough quality that it's still pretty engaging. 

I've maintained for a while now that, though it may not accurately be described as the way "forward," atonality in both melody and harmony seems to be the most shamefully underutilized 20th century music advancement of all when it comes to pop music.  Instead of passing the last 100 years retraining our ears to appreciate the innumerable combinations and "millions of colors" possible through the varied application of atonality, we've clung to practically the same conservative, inflexibly traditionalist, oh-so-Western, "16 colors" conception of harmony we've been fearfully clutching more or less since Beethoven.  It's with great pleasure that I welcome this group's experimentation with atonality in "Lighthouse Keepers'" more violent sections as well as the depth it adds to some of the more ethereal passages.  Though 70's progressive rock eventually became hated by some for its less attractive aspects and exponents, to the point that the word "progressive" almost exclusively conjures sounds of Hammond organs, Moog synthesizers, romantic composition and 20 minute songs, I long for a future in which the word "progressive" returns to its literal meaning and can be used to describe music whose intent is to continue music's progress and (ideally) perpetual journey to become something it wasn't already before.  Sadly, we've instead got "Art Rock," "Experimental," "Post-Rock," "Post-Punk" and "Noise" all using increasingly vague synonyms to distance themselves from the period flavor of 70's progressive music when in reality they're often attempting to achieve similar goals.  That said, I think Van der Graaf Generator (though obviously of the 70's in sound) puts a distinctive spin on the period's common tropes and provides enough interesting experimentation that they're still worth checking out and deserve their cult status as one of the best of the original waves of progressive bands.  While I don't think any of their albums are flawless, I do think the uncommon number of risks they take more than adequately justifies the flaws.

In celebration of the horrible album art, here's the back cover.

Gentle Giant - In a Glass House

With at least five solid albums, a lineup full of virtuoso multi-instrumentalists and a totally unique sound, to me, Gentle Giant is a great band.  While their counterpoint-focused arrangements and penchant for unsettling busy-ness and atonality were probably too sophisticated to garner the group mainstream success (even in the early 70's), looking across their discography it's clear that even in 1973 the band was aiming for a more commercial sound.  While many people point at Octopus as their best (and it probably does the best job of fusing their more experimental side with a less dated sound and strong songs), In a Glass House is probably my favorite in their discography for its graceful first statement of the classic mid-70's Gentle Giant sound, its many memorable moments, and some of the strongest songs on any of their albums.  Make no mistake, though--this is 70's prog, and there's little on this disc to make you forget.

In a lot of ways, Gentle Giant are like some weird progressive version of the Band--their verve is infectious as the band members swap vocals and trade around on something like 30 different instruments based on the needs of each song.  Like many of the later Gentle Giant albums, In a Glass House is loosely based on the title's concept, which plays out generally in a set of songs that focuses inward on matters of psychological introspection and interpersonal relationships.  While it's hardly a meticulously laid-out treatise, the themes add cohesion and the lyrics are always intriguing if sometimes inscrutable.

While the songs are mostly long (four of six are over seven minutes long), they're distinctly songs and feature compelling examples of the band's trademark fusion of rock, classical, folk and the occasional soul and funk elements.  In addition to a good flow between rockers and quiet reflections, there are loads of great moments, like the gleefully atonal xylophone solo on the opener "The Runaway," which also manages to state themes of complex counterpoint, psychedelic and spacey vocal arrangements, hypnotic guitar riffs, and some great folky flute breakdowns.  As always, the transitions are seamless and the music is anchored by a fat, funky bottom provided by the bass and drums.  "An Inmate's Lullaby" features only percussion instruments and uses some great overlapping vocal production to enhance a first-person narration of a mental ward and the gray area that is "madness" (a classic theme in British music of the 60's and 70's).

"Way of Life" is maybe the least listenable track, with a slightly frantic opening riff, but it's certainly dynamic and a great example of how good the band is at juxtaposing Derek Shulman's ballsy lead vocals with Kerry Minnear's delicate vocals, which show up on a great pump organ section that emulates church music.  "Experience" is more classic Gentle Giant, with lots of contrast between odd-metered violin/guitar riffs, medieval-sounding vocal harmonies and a simple repetitive bass riff.  Gary Green's mid-song guitar solo, while not the proggiest thing on the album, is glorious for its razor-sharp tone, a perfect helping of slappy reverb, and the way it fits so well over the aforementioned bass riff.  Similarly crushing is the heaviness of the main riff of "In a Glass House," which has both a flitting, jazzy opening section and a ballad in the previous song ("A Reunion") to make it sound even heavier and worthy of its place as the album-closer.  While bands like Henry Cow employ a similar amount of counterpoint but focus on an edgier and more experimental brand of progressive music, it's hard to complain about how Gentle Giant manages to make such geeky music so catchy.  They pursued this album's template with admirable success through The Power and the Glory, Free Hand, and Interview, but I think it was definitely at its freshest state here.  Great album.

Egg - The Civil Surface

The sound of a ticking metronome opens Egg's third and final album, 1974's The Civil Surface.  I don't think there's any better sound to introduce a band like Egg, whose music is probably the most classically-influenced of all the Canterbury bands and is typified by Mont Campbell's precise, intricate compositions that are filled in by Dave Stewart's interweaving organ and keyboard parts and driven by Clive Brooks' undeniably exact skills at the drum kit.  The Civil Surface is really more of a reunion album for Egg (not to be confused with newer group, The Egg), as the group had broken up in 1972--luckily for us, they had another album in them and here develop the sound of their first two albums even further.

Being a reunion album, The Civil Surface is a bit of a fractured collection.  Therein lies the main stumbling block regarding my ability to enjoy Egg--they present some of the most interesting and "out" ideas of any of the Canterbury (or any other progressive bands, for that matter), but when it comes to crafting a cohesive and really great album, they were never really able to make it happen.  The ideas really do reach rarefied heights, though.  The aforementioned opener, "Germ Patrol" is perhaps most typical of the group's overall career sound, with plenty of Canterbury fuzz organ and bass, jazz harmony and ear-surprising twists.  It's on this track I most notice a common complaint with The Civil Surface--the drums are mixed extremely loudly, and it's especially painful when Brooks goes for the high-hat, with lots of sibilance that can be really sharp and hard on the ears.  Because of this, the album doesn't really sound good on a lot of sound systems (especially ones prone to treble-y sound), and the more you push the volume to discern the compositional intricacies, the more the drums get in the way.  The song plays effectively with additive rhythms and builds on its somewhat anonymous melody, though, and features nice clarinet and bassoon from Henry Cow guests Tim Hodgkinson and Lindsay Cooper, respectively, and some signature french horn from Campbell.  This style reprises on the confusingly-titled mid-album "Prelude," which also features wordless female vocals reminiscent of those which would later appear on related acts Hatfield and the North and National Health.

The album's crowning achievement is undoubtedly "Enneagram," which Mont Campbell supposedly composed in response to composer Aaron Copland's criticism that his "Long Piece" (from The Polite Force) was merely music of repetitions and didn't develop.  Campbell certainly took Copland's words to heart--over its 9 minutes, "Enneagram" develops Egg's tricky rhythms to their fullest, alternating between driving hard, fuzzed-out riffs and spacey sections where Stewart's keys flitter away with echo and the cymbals provide a backdrop for Campbell's bass runs.  The song's rousing conclusion fuses heavy toms with stuttering organ and bass unison.  It's really interesting to hear Dave Stewart's keyboard work in the midst of the 70's; though the compositions are mostly Campbell's, there are keyboard moments that recall both the gentle jazzy interludes of previous band Khan as well as crisp contrapuntal figures that predict breaks that show up later in National Health and Hatfield and the North.  Though that style dominates here, I think it displays Stewart's abilities to play to different styles but also forge a distinctive style of his own when the time came for his compositions to dominate.

As for the rest of the set, there's material that echoes Egg's earlier work ("Wring Out the Ground Loosely Now"), featuring what are probably Campbell's weakest vocals to date and some mainly textural guitar from Gong and future solo star Steve Hillage.  Compared musically and lyrically with "Contrasong" from The Polite Force, it doesn't hold up so well--depending on how you look at it, the vocals either add variety to or awkwardly interrupt a mostly-instrumental album.  There's also plenty of material exhibiting some modern classical vibes, like the interesting and blithely-plodding "Nearch" which joyfully experiments with continually-increasing amounts of silence, and two wind quartets, which only feature Campbell from the Egg lineup.  To my ears, the sprightly first quartet ironically echoes some of Copland's more accessible works, albeit with a little more dissonance, and the second experiments more with longer-sustained notes and a sort of rocking eighth-note rhythmic figure.  The quartets are good, in my opinion, but if you came to Egg looking for their more rocking tendencies, I can see how you might find them irrelevant and cluttering.  As I mentioned earlier, despite a wealth of creative ideas, the album can't seem to weave its variety into a really good flow.  Still, I manage to enjoy it quite a bit every time I hear it!

Thinking about Egg in the context of their whole discography and the Canterbury scene in general, it seems like their strengths lie more in their rhythmic and contrapuntal pursuits rather than their melodies--even the best songs here are difficult to recall melodically, in part due to the fact that only bass and keyboards contribute to the melodic statements.  Though melody probably wasn't on top of the list of the band's intentions, I can't help feeling that this contributes in a mildly negative way to their overall accessibility--but hey, we're talking about the Canterbury scene already, so there's no need to worry about billboard charts!  Judging by his recent interviews on the BBC's progressive rock documentary and on blog friend It's Psychedelic Baby's recent interview, Mont Campbell is fairly bitter that he wasn't allowed to fully flower as a composer and musician because the music business wasn't nurturing enough.  It's the sad truth, but three albums released on fairly large labels is a whole lot better than similar artists are getting these days!  Sometimes we just have to nurture ourselves.

Gong - Camembert Electrique

Back to the Canterbury scene, but certainly not too far of a step away from free jazz or even RIO, here we've got one of the all-time great Canterbury albums and one of the most frenetic psychedelic rock albums of the early 70's.  Even though he's not British, Aussie Gong bandleader Daevid Allen was a member of that most embryonic of Canterbury groups--The Soft Machine--which, along with other proto-Canterbury group The Wilde Flowers, was at one time home to members of most of the scene's later core bands.  If ever there was a hippie, it would be Daevid Allen--he was famously refused reentry into the UK when attempting to return from Europe because of overstaying his visa on a previous trip, so he remained in Europe (mostly France) and formed Gong.  It's for this reason that Gong is one of the most (if not the most) international of the original Canterbury bands. 

Although Cambembert Electrique isn't the Gong debut (that honor goes to 1970's Magick Brother), it's undeniably the beginning of what most people consider the classic form of Gong--the one that concerns itself with Allen's hippie mystical and anti-establishment vision shrouded in mythology of teapots, Pothead Pixies and mythical planets, all displayed over some of the craziest jazz-influenced psychedelic music to be heard in the entire era.  The story of the planet Gong is first broached in the sound-effect heavy opening introductory snipped voiced by the "Radio Gnome"--from there on out, though, the album is a nearly nonstop barrage of weirdness, humor, noise, rock and jazz that knows no equal--in the Gong discography and elsewhere.

"You Can't Kill Me" offers a pretty solid template for the album--Allen's winding but catchy compositions feature a lot of repeating figures and ostinati, looping rhythms and noise, while the lyrics hilariously toy with ideas of reincarnation and karma, while his partner Gilli Smyth contributes heavily-reverbed high-pitched moans, groans and what became known as "space whispers."  Though on first listen this music might sound like utter chaos (well, it is chaotic, but not necessarily utterly), closer attention reveals an almost punk rock-like attitude supplemented by Didier Malherbe (distinctly "French" saxophone style) and Pip Pyle (unparalleled prowess on the drum kit, later to become one of the most experienced Canterbury journeymen) both of whom seem to have no difficulty negotiating Allen's compositions and their innumerable and quickly-transitioning ideas.  Though the tumultuous Gong lineup later featured the more-lauded guitar hero Steve Hillage on lead guitar, I find Allen's guitar style particularly impressive for its audacity (just listen to the noise he conjures up on "You Can't Kill Me").

The album continues to plow an increasingly eclectic furrow with the organ-driven music hall "I've Been Stoned Before," where Allen goes from comical farce to sounding like he's going to shred his vocal chords in torment in just about 2 1/2 minutes.  "Mr. Long Shanks" (see above video) transistions from gleeful carnival jazz rock ("The man in the parlor/you know what he's after") to a Gilli Smyth space whisper tour-de-force at its halfway point, while "I Am Your Animal" finds the female vocalist projecting a more aggressive (even x-rated) performance over Allen's spiky repeated riff, which morphs into a rapid-fire vocal barrage that ends with Allen madly yelling about licking the moon.

After a couple of sound collage interludes ("Tu veux un Camembert?") the band returns with the forward-looking (to later Gong albums) "Fohat Digs Holes in Space," which spins an atmosphere out of Allen's "glissando" slide guitar--the part when he seamlessly drops from the eerie high register into the midrange before 40 seconds is breathtaking.  I'm not sure if glissando is really the correct word for the playing style, but that's what Gong fans have decided to call it--anyway, it's that echoey spacey sound that starts about 30 seconds in.  The song's eventual rock riff is one of the album's catchiest, with Allen extolling some beat-cum-hippie poetry ("mirror mirror, on the wall, who's the biggest fool of all?") before another overdriven sax and lead guitar breakdown.  The beginning of "And You Tried So Hard" is the closest thing to folk rock to be found on the album, though it quickly weirds itself out with more Gong flavor.  The album closes just as powerfully as it opened with "Tropical Fish"--one of the band's most effective mechanisms is doubling the melodies on guitar and sax for a stabbing effect--with a heaping handful of bizarre riffs and lyrics ("seem like a typical witch to me/seem like a tropical fish to me"), a spaced-out interstellar desert in the middle ("I couldn't believe my eyes....") and closing with the almost martial invocation of the moon goddess, "Selene," and a recapitulation of the album's earlier machine-gun lyrical themes.  The Radio Gnome returns to remind you that the ride's only just beginning, and you'd better believe him.

Although the full on Gong mythology isn't in narrative form here, the lyrical themes set the scene for the epic Radio Gnome Trilogy to come.  Though Gong may have equaled the fun, trippiness and quality and ideological resourcefulness found here on later albums, they did it from a spacier angle, and sadly this album is in many ways one-of-a-kind with its energy, barrage of ideas, and noisy edginess.  It manages to incorporate a lot of jazz influence without committing to long-form jazzy passages (like so many later groups, including Gong would do) by radically changing from idea to idea in short periods of time.  Their arrangement style here is one that was certainly emulated by later Canterbury bands, and it's easy to tell that Allen's association with Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers was a mutually-enriching one; his idiosyncratic sense of humor obviously influenced to a large extent the sense of whimsy and insubordination prevalent in a lot of the Canterbury scene's later music.  My only complaint with the Charly CD reissue of this album is sound, which is quiet, treble-heavy and not as full as I imagine it should be.  Let's hope for a good remaster.

Until then, you can get it here on CD or MP3.  Oh, and if you listen to any of this and think Gong don't sound like typical hippies, take a gander at their ridiculous get-ups.  Allen appears not to mind being stapled in the face...and that's quite a wizard staff.

Aksak Maboul - Un Peu de l'Âme des Bandits

After a week that saw reviews for Brazilian pop, 60's folk and French pop, I feel it's time to travel back out into the...beyond.  There's so much to say about this album, Belgian group Aksak Maboul, and RIO (Rock In Opposition) that I almost don't know where to start--let's begin with RIO.  Rock In Opposition, though it's sometimes loosely used as a genre tag, was originally actually a festival organized by British group Henry Cow (with especial effort on the part of drummer Chris Cutler) in order to promote avant-garde rock groups selected by Cutler (eight in total) that were receiving little to no support from commercially-minded record companies.  Though the movement was short-lived, it garnered a fair amount of press for the groups and, more importantly, facilitated the release of some of the most challenging progressive music produced throughout the 1970's and beyond.  Since the loose movement became inactive in the 1980's, you're more likely to hear RIO referred to as a music genre used to describe either music that members of the original RIO groups have made, or music that is similar to, for example, Henry Cow's--dense, avant-garde, forward-looking, often with healthy doses of modern classical and jazz influences, though I personally don't find the tag to be the most helpful.

Belgian group Aksak Maboul was part of the second group of artists invited to RIO and was primarily the project of Marc Hollander (previously of CoS and founder of record label Crammed Discs).  Aksak Maboul's 1977 debut was much more of a solo effort, with Hollander playing most of the instruments (a lot of keyboards, wind instruments and drum machines)--it's a playful, eclectic and enjoyable outing, but not today's album!  In 1980, Hollander was joined by Henry Cow alumni Fred Frith and Chris Cutler and a few lesser-known European musicians for this, "their" second and final album.  Though Aksak Maboul wasn't an original RIO group, I picked this album to introduce RIO because it's one of the most consistent, representative, and simply best RIO has to offer.

You know (or at least hope) from the ridiculous cover (depicting no fewer than two erections) that this album is going to be a crazy trip, and it certainly doesn't disappoint.  Personally, I find this album extremely satisfying because of the experimentation--most all of the songs are based on at least one describable experiment, and the results are not only challenging, they're often quite listenable.  A great example is the opener, "A Modern Lesson" (please, oh please, watch the video), which manages to deconstruct a classic blues riff with dissonance, drum machines, and wacked-out female vocals in under 6 seconds.  As the track progresses, the wind instruments enter (along with some pinball machine recordings) for an interlude, the main riff returns, then the bass and tempo increase and Hollander's electronic keys and Frith's detuned guitars amp up the energy for a driving finale that sees an incredibly complex wind/key/string arrangement brimming with head-spinning counterpoint and--what elevates this beyond similar attempts--a memorable melody.  "Palmiers en Pots" radically switches gears with a tango supposedly composed of (get this) pieces of several popular tangos, cut up with scissors, rearranged, and performed in random order.

That Fred Frith was on an unstoppable roll in the early 1980's, I'll never deny--his fingerprints (as musician, composer and producer) are all over this album, and in some ways it's better than its Frith solo contemporaries as his ideas (some heard already heard on other albums) are supplemented and developed by other musicians.  Though the resulting disc doesn't exude quite as much of Hollander's personality as the Aksak Maboul debut, its diversity is one of its greatest assets--"Geistige Nacht" features a frantic sax-led melody with some great free jazz soloing in which the sax and eventually Frith's guitar trade squawks, and "I Viaggi Formano La Gioventu" features a snaking Middle-Eastern melody doubled on wordless vocal, violin that's strongly reminiscent of Frith's other 80's work, though that handclap track buried in the mix toward the end of the song shows up again on Cheap At Half the Price's "Absent Friends."   "Inoculating Rabies" is probably the second best experiment on the disc, blending a balls-out punk riff driven by Frith's and Cutler's unfettered noise with the addition of a delicate woodwind arrangement.  It's probably the best (if not only) progressive commentary on and appropriation of the burgeoning punk movement I've heard so far, which, by 1980, had all but swallowed what little market experimental progressive music like Aksak Maboul might have cornered.  It's pretty ironic how loud Frith, bass and Cutler get considering how "obsolete" punk supposedly made their musical contributions.

The 23-minute-long "Cinema" rounds out the album with long-form composition interspersed with free improvisation (there's a lengthy and wicked cello solo as well as a pretty epic Fred Frith guitar solo), recording collage, a recurring sinister-sounding theme, some really heavy jamming from the full group (Cutler's drumming here is the liveliest I've heard since Henry Cow's last album, and recently, too).  The melodies and ideas aren't quite as immediate as they are on the shorter songs, but the added space allows the group to accomplish some things that it couldn't in five minutes, and it gives us more to uncover on later listens.  Pieces like this often seem to divide the camp of potentially interested listeners--take longer than five or six minutes and some people will complain about having their time wasted.  If there are enough different ideas being developed, though, I don't mind it taking a while--as much as I'm leaning toward shorter songs packed with briefly-stated ideas these days, I can appreciate a piece that actually allows listeners to engage with and unravel the ideas being presented during the piece, rather than after numerous plays.  While Hollander's personality is somewhat obscured by the thickness of the production and arrangements, it's perceptible on repeated listens, especially if you've heard his earlier works.  I really enjoy his mechanical-sounding drum machines and keyboard lines, not to mention his contributions to the horn sections.  Let's hear it for RIO, and this week let's keep going down the rabbit hole.


Available here on CD, and here on MP3.

Henry Cow - Leg End

There is apparently some debate as to whether Henry Cow can accurately be deemed part of the Canterbury scene as an actual physical scene, but to me they're both clearly a part of the scene (due to guitarist Fred Frith's geographical origins and the band's association with Robert Wyatt both live and on his Rock Bottom and Ruth is Stranger than Richard albums) and part of the Canterbury scene as a genre of music that blends rock, jazz, folk, experimental and a playful sense of whimsy.  Henry Cow is one of my favorite groups in or out of the Canterbury scene for the complexity and dense melody of their music, the way each member of the group contributes in an identifiable and irreplaceable way, for the way they blend avant-garde compositions with improvised music across their sparse but evolutionary discography, and for the fact that their music remains challenging but listenable no matter how many times I return to it.

Leg End is the band's 1973 debut--it doesn't take too many seconds after the rimshot that kicks off "Nirvana for Mice" before it's obvious that Henry Cow is probably the Canterbury band most influenced by avant-garde modern classical music, which shows in their compositions' weaving concentric circles of odd-metered counterpoint as well as a hefty dose of atonality and dissonance lurking behind and within the jazzy melodies.  The sound is saxophone-heavy, with at least two horns at most times, and Fred Frith's guitar is often double-tracked, while some synthesizer fills in the background not covered by the manic drums and restlessly probing bass lines.  "Nirvana..." sort of sums up a good part of the band's mission on Leg End, consisting of a vibrantly intricate composition which quickly dissolves into a jam over which Geoff Leigh's saxophone runs rampant in an ecstatic free jazz testimony.  Interestingly, the rest of the group's vamping mechanism during Leigh's solo acts as a sort of improvisational version of the composed sections, as each band member sticks with a different meter and improvises accompaniment.  The parts interweave, at times synchronizing and at other times sounding rather tenuously held-together.  For me, it's exhilarating.  If you weren't already awake, the song-ending staccato blast will ensure either your attention or annoyance (these guys are admittedly not for everyone).

The rest of Leg End follows a similar path, though there is a superabundance of ideas, great variety in mood and melody, and some more surprises in instrumental arrangements, including flute, clarinet and Frith's violin.  The Tim Hodgkinson-penned "Amygdala" boasts an ever-shifting melodic structure that dabbles in the types of Renaissance style that is Gentle Giant's stock in trade, while the dark and cacophonous "Teenbeat Introduction" goes further down the free jazz rabbithole before swelling gloriously into Frith's "Teenbeat" composition.  "The Tenth Chaffinch" sounds very much like one of the group's live improvisations (mostly unreleased until the release of the box set The Road), blending musique concrete (pre-recorded sounds) with totally atonal, unstructured improvisation.  The album closes with an odd track, "Nine Funerals of the Citizen King," which actually features a vocal arrangement.  Though the music is extremely dense (perhaps even impenetrable on first listen), further listening reveals melodic motifs that pop up in "Teenbeat" and return again throughout "With the Yellow Half-Moon" and again in "Nine Funerals..."

For me, Leg End and the rest of Henry Cow's discography represents the real deal when it comes to progressive music--genre is irrelevant, and the band unflinchingly incorporates modern musical concepts into a sound that assaults the ear with surprises at every turn but remains a fun and energetic (especially Chris Cutler's drums, which rival Robert Wyatt's Soft Machine-era drums in energy and creativity) listen with innumerable moments of twinkling beauty.  I've heard the band's earlier material compared with Frank Zappa and the Mothers' albums from the same period, and while I can see a general stylistic similarity (jazzy, complex compositions, lots of noise and craziness), Henry Cow sounds so much more out-of-this-world and surprising to my ears, while Zappa's compositions (and especially his guitar playing), idiosyncratic as they are, always remind me directly of something I've already heard before.  This album is the perfect example of music that doesn't need lyrics--when it sounds and feels this indescribable, why limit it with the trappings of lyrics?

The whole Henry Cow discography can be found at Recommended Records, which is owned and operated by drummer Chris Cutler, or here, if you don't want to pay in GBP.

Ramases - Space Hymns

Here's an obscure one.  Ramases' 1971 debut is a great example of what the record label situation was like in the early 70's--with the success of psychedelia from the Beatles and the growing popularity of early progressive groups like King Crimson and the Moody Blues, major labels were much more interested in throwing wacky music at the wall to see if it would stick--commercially, that is.  A lot of weird people who no present-day label would pay attention to got fully-funded releases, which makes for quite a few interesting artifacts and a few stone cold classics.  This album belongs to the former category--you at least hope you're in for a few interesting moments when you know that the main guy claims to be from a different planet, sent to educate the earth people with his alien knowledge.  At the very least, the concept gets us a ridiculously awesome Roger Dean cover with a church steeple taking off into space.  Oh, and 10cc is the backing band.

The opener, "Life Child," is easily the hardest cut on the album, boasting a funky riff and some fuzzy guitar solos--unfortunately its promise of hard psychedelia and edgy angry affronts to the earth people is rarely repeated during the rest of the album.  However, we do get quite a bit of weirdness--"Quasar One" is dedicated to Ramases' homeworld and features some pretty sweet chanting, while "Molecular Delusions" experiments with a Gregorian chant style.  "Journey to the Inside" is probably the trippiest track on the disc, replete with cascading backward recordings and closing the album with Ramases somewhat interestingly discussing the fact that the distance between the planets is comparative to the distance between electrons and nuclei before losing us again by fading out saying "If you took a pill to get smaller..."

The alien concept is at times rewarding and at other times frustrating--rewarding on the rather pastoral stoned reverie "And the Whole World" as well as the mysteriously creepy "Earth-People"--then frustrating when the solution for the "Earth-People" is the return of Jesus (track 10, "Jesus").  A little creative follow-through, please?  Elsewhere limp writing holds back some catchy folk-pop in "Baloon" ("just off the surface of the moon"...yikes; don't worry--he also rhymes "bubble" and "trouble" later in the same song).  Aside from the songwriting issues and failure to go for broke on the weird alien concept, the music here is held back by Sel's (Ramases' wife) nasal vocals, which are usually present in the form of unison backing vocals (couldn't even write some harmony parts) as well as unnecessary repetition of vocal lines and ideas.  Case in point, "Molecular Delusions," which presents an interesting 20-second idea, then proceeds to repeat it for four minutes.  "You're the Only One (Joe)" has potential to be the creepiest Earth-people finger-pointer on the whole album but spoils the idea with irritating vocals that repeat again and again (is the line paying homage to Midnight Cowboy, is it an indictment of mankind's collective selfishness, or is it just annoying?).

This album always gives me a little pleasure whenever I give it a spin--at least in the act of imagining a world where record labels fund this kind of thing--but I'm always left frustrated at its many areas of unfulfilled potential.

You can find it here on CD, if you really want to.  And, I've just noticed, the long out-of-print follow-up, Glass Top Coffin has finally seen CD release.  It's even less heavy than Space Hymns, but is probably a better album.

Robert Wyatt - Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard

Robert Wyatt's first album after the career-defining Rock Bottom is not likely to satisfy any relative newcomers looking for a reprise of its predecessor's dark catharsis and cohesive brilliance.  To longer-term initiates, though, it's a solid representation of what's most often expected from Wyatt from his Soft Machine days to his more recent work.  In many ways, I think this album sets the template for his material from the last 15 years in terms of the wealth of guest contributions (John Greaves and Fred Frith from Henry Cow, Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno) and its unevenness.

Like most of Wyatt's post-accident music, the sounds here are gentle but quirky, moodily psychedelic and jazzy in that classic Canterbury way.  The whimsical, melodically-challenging "Muddy Mouse" segments punctuate the first, "Richard" side of the album (or second, depending which version you have), breaking up the hypnotic groove and progressive sonic layering of "Solar Flares" and the equally languid, spine-tingling "Five Black Notes and One White Note," which plays with gorgeous intervals on a magnified level, similarly to some of his later work on Dondestan.  Wyatt accomplishes some of his best vocal trumpet impressions on the side-closing "Muddy Mouth" as well as some pretty humorous and casual singing regarding the world's oceans.

The other, "Ruth" side of the album is rather different, featuring much more conventional song structures, as on the jazzy sort-of-funny (mostly for the words) "Soup Song" and the slightly quirky blues of "Sonia."  "Team Spirit" is a more rocking, long-form song about a football that stretches into more interesting territory with some cool sonic excursions.  The dirge-like "Song for Che" closes the album on a fittingly valedictory note.

While Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard rarely succeeds in the same ways Rock Bottom did, it's pretty typical of later Wyatt--despite its status as a mixed bag of sorts, there is plenty of experimentation going on and it's a pleasant listen without ever being too hard on the ears.  If you manage your expectations and can forgive the album's inability to stack up to its predecessor, it'll be a good gauge of how much you'll likely enjoy Wyatt's later albums. 

Get it here on CD, or here on MP3.

Roy Harper - Bullinamingvase

Bullinamingvase (apologetically titled One of Those Days in England for the US release) is Roy Harper's last album of the 1970's as well as his last truly great album for at least eight years (or more, depending on whose opinion you're hearing).  Like HQ before it, this album delves further into a full band sound with slight progressive and psychedelic flourishes.  Although the band is different and a bit less distinctive (no more Bill Bruford or Chris Spedding, unfortunately), the production is probably even more diverse than HQ's and the overall flow is smoother and more coherent--the album succeeds because Harper's songs exemplify the things that made his earlier works unique while at the same time entering territories as yet untrod by the the songwriter. 

Listening to the "One of Those Days in England (Part 1)," it's hard to imagine the track was only worked up at the behest of the label in order to provide a single for the album--though the words are light, the song (in addition to being catchy with a great steel guitar riff and Paul and Linda McCartney on backing vocals) establishes a dreamy, wistful tone that permeates much of the album, not to mention the fact that it first introduces the melodic theme that will return several times in the song's later parts.  "These Last Days" is a fascinating Harper song to which I find myself continually returning.  In it the oft-indignant singer takes on a tone of acquiescence, singing "we might have to take the world the way we've made it"... "I'm not sure that any side is right/any side."  The subtly jazzy harmony of the music is suitably narcotic for the song's message, and the final lines "Some of us ain't satisfied with less than any universe/Well hell I'll have to go along with that, 'cause I've got mine" eerily predict the self-absorbed malaise that seems to have stifled any chance at an efficacious counterculture movement in the 30+ years since the song was recorded.

"Cherishing the Lonesome," a hopeful love song is another favorite, with a dynamic arrangement that showcases Harper's inimitable fingerstyle guitar but also crescendos into a progressive full-band arrangement with overdriven electrics and some well-placed xylophone.  "The Naked Flame" (a perpetual live performance survivor) is country-tinged with more steel guitar, recounting a dissolving relationship with some more great lines ("I can't believe we'll just exist/as figments of each other's past"), while the absurdly irreverent "Watford Gap" is a hoe-down singalong that rips the shit out of a roadside diner often frequented by touring bands.  After listening to some of the lines ("the city's like a goolie in a groupie's stagnant womb," par example) it's easy to tell why early versions of the album excised the track for fear of legal reprisals.  No one can accuse Roy of completely abandoning controversy despite this being one of his more meditative outings.

Of course, the sidelong "One of Those Days in England (Parts 2-10)" is the album's crown jewel--the pinnacle that the rest of the album's formidable poetry hints at.  Harper's last great epic is suffused with English mythology, imagery and history and glows with sentimental  passion.  Harper employs parallel structure to simultaneously consider his changing homeland as well as the nature and trajectory of the human race and the passing of time.  Throughout, Harper's humanistic outlook is at its most compelling, tempering his fire with the salt and wisdom of life experience, along with some vivid recollections of early-40's England.  Where numerous singer/songwriters fail to provide interesting arrangements when playing in a full-band setting, Roy adorns his core voice/guitar nucleus with some great piano, a bit of harp, and plenty of (relatively) hard rock interludes and varying tempos and textures.

Though the songs on this album are geared toward a full band setting, Harper's at heart an intimate character--the songs play equally well in an all-acoustic setting, and the backing band is never the center of the show the way it almost was at times on HQ.  Still, the production Roy was granted by EMI and Harvest is undeniably high-class, demanding that the music be taken seriously by simply sounding good.  Not a lot of madcaps of Roy's stripe had so many opportunities to fully realize their musical visions, especially not at the end of the 1970's, and Bullinamingvase makes good on the investment (well, artistically, if not especially commercially, though I think the album performed fairly well in comparison with Roy's other releases).  Though Roy's later career has had numerous peaks, Bullinamingvase is his last big success with a big label, fully utilizing the professional support without the bitterness or dodgy production judgment that would follow on The Unknown Soldier and Commercial Breaks.

You can buy it from Roy here, or here.

Captain Beyond - Captain Beyond

Not the 3D cover; you can tell because his space energy ball isn't inside your brain.

Though Captain Beyond is a band known by few, its membership previously performed in well-known outfits--singer Rod Evans was Deep Purple's original vocalist (including the hit "Hush"), guitarist Larry "Rhino" Reinhardt and bassist Lee Dorman were in Iron Butterfly, and drum God Bobby Caldwell was in the Edgar Winter Group.  Though the band made a handful of albums through the 70's (and apparently an EP in 2000), I consider them a one-off; the quality of this album is unlike anything else they put out--not to mention how well it stands up to the rest of the hard rock/proto-metal/progressive psychedelic field it fits in.

As with most of my favorite albums, I can still remember the first time I listened to this one--I remember it as a relentless barrage of detuned guitar riffs that was enjoyable but afterward seemed like a slightly same-y blur.  After a few listens and some time off (always a good way to separate the wheat from the chaff) I returned to find a relatively short album (35 minutes) positively bristling with ideas.  Since it's become an all-time favorite and one of my heavier, not overly-brainy delights.

Every time I listen to this album I can't help marveling at just how well all of the elements and all-important group chemistry lined up.  The lead-off track illustrates particularly well the band's aesthetic and visceral power.  Caldwell's odd-metered drumming kicks it off with his indomitable snare (he's got to be one of the best drummers of all time that didn't make it huge, and his drumming alone makes this album worth listening to) and the muscular rhythm guitar kicks in.  Pretty soon Evans is singing about black dreams, landing on a star and floating on a sea of air.  After only a minute and a half, an entirely different riff shifts the feel to 4/4 and the guitar leads get a whole lot gnarlier (as does Evans' singing) the last minute of the song returns to odd meter with a chromatically ascending atonal riff to close the track.  None of the song parts repeat--why should they?  You hear the ideas and there's no need to drive them into the ground.  This is pretty typical of the whole album--a cohesive sound that manages to churn out a nonstop, heavily enjambed stream of (mostly guitar-driven) ideas.  Right up my alley.

The rest of the album subtly alters the original themes and throws in an impressive array of styles--hazy psychedelia in "Myopic Void," jazz fusion in "Thousand Days of Yesterdays," Hendrix-influenced hard rock in "I Can't Feel Nothin' Part 1," to an almost MOR, lounge-styled psych jazz in "As the Moon Speaks (Return)."  The album's real backbone, though, is in heavy proto-metal riffs.  They certainly abound, popping up suddenly even in the mellower tracks, and there are even a few more traditional songs to sink your teeth into--"Mesmerization Eclipse" is notable for its guttural riff, aggressive drums and Evans' well-placed song-opening grunt, while "Raging River of Fear" again leans on Jimi while predicting late 70's and 80's metal's penchant for vocal harmonies.

As far as vocals and lyrics are concerned, they are a seemingly incongruous combination of metaphysical outer space-oriented images and more typically hard rock lyrics about women.  While some may find these subjects cheesy, I feel they fit the music perfectly--hard rock really can't ever succeed at taking itself too seriously, so why not focus on some truly cosmic subjects?  It fits the album art, and really it's only cheesy if you prefer not to engage in the underlying subject matter.  Evans, whose vocals are best described as "manly" proves a pretty versatile vocalist, and even a subtle one--I'm still hearing minor vocal nuances that are easily overshadowed by the riffs.  While his former band was exploring extremely epic, theatrical styles with his replacement (Ian Gillan), Evans here sounds just like a dude fighting with his place in the universe, maybe on drugs.  Which, theatricality and drugs aside, is all any of us is really doing at any given time.

Before bidding you one last time to check this album out, I have to remark that it's one of the best complex integrations of the cowbell that I've ever heard.  It can be done.

Get 'er here on CD or MP3.

Fred Frith - Gravity

Gravity, Fred Frith's first post-Henry Cow solo outing, is an album positively packed with ideas.  From its through-and-through dance/rhythm concept, to the dizzying array of styles presented by each song, to the mottled textures of Frith's fantastically wrinkly songs to the man's all-over-the-place guitar playing, a lesser group would have make a career's worth of albums out of the ideas present on just half of these songs. 

The songs presented here tread middle-Eastern themes and modes ("Hands of the Juggler"), Scandanavian and British folk ("Don't Cry For Me" and "A Career in Real Estate," respectively), as well as more familiar Frith subjects like melodic jazz (on "Spring Any Day Now" I could swear he single-handedly created the template for all Nintendo music to come) and the avant-garde ("Year of the Monkey," "Crack in the Concrete").  We also get a taste of classic Canterbury humor with a totally wonky-melodied but somehow recognizable rendition of "Dancing in the Street."

I think what sets this apart from other 80's (and beyond) Fred Frith albums is the driving energy, which must in part be attributed to the backing bands--Samla Mammas Manna on the A-Side and the Muffins on the B-Side--who lend able, ballsy and often manic flesh to the bones of Frith's compositions.  Additionally, it's probably the highest concentration of pure guitar shredding ever collected on one Fred Frith album (including his solo guitar albums)--the avant-garde rock songs here have some of the most complex riffs, lead lines and soloing I've ever heard the man play, and considering the rest of the projects he's been involved in, that's really saying something.  Songs like "Norrgarden Nyvla," with its majestic-turned-insane distortion-soaked lead lines contrast yet sit perfectly comfortably near the clean Massacre-esque riffing and unbalanced sliding he pulls of on "Slap Dance."

At times the music gets quite atonal and almost mathematical in its composition (though Frith's kind of atonality rivals Captain Beefheart's in its sense of melody), but somehow it's more listenable (if still quite busy) than a lot of other avant-garde music--even examples from Frith's own canon.  Probably its greatest asset is its sense of humor and the aura of fun surrounding the whole album--a sense of humor that was surely lacking from the final days of Henry Cow and the entirety of the Art Bears project.  To hear this album immediately after Western Culture is to believe against plain evidence that avant-garde can be fun.

Get the CD here.