Following on from Us & Them’s splendid ‘Julia Dream’ reworking for the previous Fruits de Mer release, the record label that shouldn’t work but bloody well does, have tapped the Pink Floyd psychedelic vein once more to bring us mere mortals the deity-like splendour that is Vibravoid’s What Colour is Pink? EP.
Vibravoid, the German psychedelic rock outfit, are no strangers to the Fruits de Mer experience, having already appeared on the Krautrock Sensation EP. This time around the likes of Can and Kraftwerk are replaced solely by acid rock’s highest profile exponents, Pink Floyd.
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album reviews, music vid, psychedelic rock
Vanessa Williams once warbled, “save the best till last,” and though her insipid brand of asinine drivel is as welcome at Head Full of Snow as a particularly nasty bout of necrotizing fasciitis, as far as Compilation Week is concerned, we find ourselves obliged to heed her advice and have, indeed, saved the best till last.
Real Life Permanent Dreams – a cornucopia of British psychedelia 1965-1970, from Sanctuary Records, is exactly what it says on the tin, a veritable abundance of psychedelic joy that’s as essential as it is comprehensive.
With four discs (yes, four), a 46-page, oversized glossy booklet, and a monumental 99 tracks that kick off with the original demo version of The Smoke’s ‘My Friend Jack’, is there really any need for me to continue this review?
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album reviews, prog rock, psych-pop, psychedelic rock
As far as label compilations go, this three-disc profusion of prog and psychedelic prime cuts is difficult to beat.
Spirit of Joy gathers some of the better and the lesser known tracks from the considerable underground canon hosted by Polydor and its imprints during the golden age of music. From The Crazy World of Arthur Brown to Focus, stopping at such picturesque stops as Eric Burdon, Supersister, and Barclay James Harvest in between.
Despite the rare low point (is there really any need for the jazz stylings of John McLaughlin or Ginger Baker’s Air Force?), Mark Powell, who compiled the tracks and penned the extensive liner notes in the 45 page booklet, has put together a definitive retrospective of the surprisingly underground output of the traditionally overground label.
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album reviews, prog rock, psychedelic rock
Cave of Clear Light from Esoteric Recordings does for Pye Records – and its progressive imprint Dawn – what Spirit of Joy and Breath of Fresh Air do respectively for Polydor, and EMI’s prog label Harvest.
That is, deliver a comprehensive, beautifully packaged three-disc extravaganza complete with extensively detailed booklet.
Once again compiled by Mark Powell, behind both the Polydor and Harvest excursions, Cave of Clear Light shines the fiery torch on the label that’s been dismissed as a poor relation to the more dedicated exponents of the psychedelic and progressive sound. Unfairly so, one might add, as Pye/Dawn had an impressive roster of artists on the books, even if the vast majority never so much as tickled the public conscious.
Obviously, that’s the style of output HFoS thrives on.
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acid-folk, album reviews, prog rock, psychedelic rock
Following on from last year’s wholly unsuccessful Procol Harum week, HFoS has decided to launch another week-long, themed extravaganza – Compilation week. Kicking things off is the just released Looking Towards the Sky:
Reissue imprint Fantastic Voyage have made it their mission to excavate the legacy of long extinct UK label, Ember Records. Following much deep mining they’ve struck upon a rich vein of psychedelic/progressive sounds and Looking Towards the Sky pulls together the first part of this sonic yield.
We’re in obscurity heaven here, with the rarities coming thick and fast. I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve only heard one of the bands included on this compilation, Blonde on Blonde, but it’s safe to say there are one or two more I’d like to hear more of.
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album reviews, prog rock, psychedelic rock
In an alternate universe, Chris Squire and Jon Anderson never met, and Yes never formed following the collapse of psychedelic band, Mabel Greer’s Toyshop. Filling the space-prog vacuum left in their non-existent wake was Flash, who went on to rule the world during the seventies before turning a bit shit in the eighties.
Of course, that’s an alternate universe and the one you’re reading this in already had Yes ready and willing to do all of the above. At the same time, we also had Flash.
Flash was formed when Peter Banks, the original Yes guitarist, left the band under a cloud following their second album, Time and a Word. He teamed up with three likeminded spirits and even hauled in Yes’s pre-Wakeman keyboard-noodler, Tony Kaye, to guest on their 1972 self-titled debut, Flash. The result is Yes, in all but name.
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album reviews, prog rock
Jethro Tull are one of the few groups to have thus far recorded at least one studio album in each decade since the sixties. Even in the realms of prog rock, where numerous bands have made the oft embarrassing mistake of outstaying their welcome, that’s quite an achievement.
But even if Jethro Tull stretch it out to the sixth decade, releasing their 5000th or so studio album, sorting through what has gone before can be like pogoing through a minefield of earache. Pretty much anything studio-bound beyond 1978’s Heavy Horses should be approached with the utmost of caution, and the albums that came to light during that darkest decade of them all, the 1980s, can probably be dismissed outright, dependent upon the individual listener’s pain threshold.
But for a time, namely the ten years following 1968’s debut, This Was, Jethro Tull were nigh on untouchable, laying low all that dared to stand before them.
So with no further ado, here’s five must-hears from the considerable Tull canon:
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album reviews, feature, prog rock
Occasional Hawkwind frontman and co-writer of the band’s best known commercial hit, ‘Silver Machine’, Robert Calvert was an all-rounder of the 70s underground scene, knocking out poetry, musical plays and even a novel. He also found time to pursue a solo career, prior to his dying from a heart attack at the age of 43.
Released in 1974, Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters is a concept album based around the American Lockheed Starfighter F-104 aircraft, a modified version of which was sold abroad and proved to be hugely unreliable, claiming the lives of 115 pilots in Germany alone.
Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters is also a collection of cracking Hawkwind-style sonic excursions, threaded throughout by a satirical weave of Pythonesque spoken interludes.
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album reviews, prog rock
Perhaps fitting of a band calling themselves Made in Sweden, the trio of Georg Wadenius, Bo Haggstrom and Tommy Borgudd were, in fact, Swedish.
Equally as fitting for an album entitled Made in England, it was indeed made in England, produced by Colosseum bassist Tony Reeves, and, perhaps more importantly, performed in the Queen’s own tongue.
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album reviews, prog rock
If one were to think of a psychedelic rock band that was largely ignored during its day, yet has gone on to acquire a cult following in the intervening years, rocketing them to the status of psychedelic legends, then Tomorrow would fit the bill perfectly.
Despite being the first band to record a BBC Radio 1 John Peel session, commercial success eluded them, and even a firm, if brief, following on the underground wasn’t enough to make 1968’s self-titled debut anything more than a lone shot at album glory.
The fickle nature of swinging 60’s musical adulation may have prevented Tomorrow from recording beyond 1967, but it doesn’t stop the eponymous record from being anything short of a minor classic.
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album reviews, psych-pop, psychedelic rock
Peter Banks began life as the original guitarist with high-pitched, space-age prog noodlers Yes. Leaving the band following their second album, Time and a Word, he formed the similar sounding Flash in 1970. Following three albums he teamed up with Focus guitarist Jan Akkerman to record this solo debut, Two Sides of Peter Banks, in 1973.
In the process, he also managed to pull in guest spots from Genesis’s Steve Hackett and Phil Collins, and King Crimson’s John Wetton. The result is a peculiar progressive rock piece devoid of words, which serves as a showcase for the fretwork thread work of Banks and Akkerman.
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album reviews, prog rock
For those that dismissed prog rock as being overblown, overlong and – heaven forbid – pompous to the point of self-deluded arrogance, there was always the completely bonkers Supersister on hand to shoot down such accusations with a bizarre barrage of off-the-wall lyrics and bohemian tunes.
This is none so more evident than on one-shot side-project Sweet Okay Supersister and the 1974 album Spiral Staircase, upon which not a moment’s seriousness, or indeed sanity, is allowed to escape.
Compared to the previous Supersister album, 1973’s Iskander, this is a very different beast entirely. Whereas that was an about turn in direction, being a somewhat po-faced concept album in the more traditional prog rock vein, Spiral Staircase returned the sense of humour to the Supersister name for what was to be the silliest offering yet.
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album reviews, prog rock
Pete Sinfield, lyricist and sometime producer for the first four albums by prog rock visionaries King Crimson, entered the studio himself in 1973 to record Still, his one and only album.
Released on the newly-formed, ELP-owned Manticore label, Still calls on the assistance of former King Crimson guitarist and the L in ELP, Greg Lake, to help out on a number of tracks along with other leading-light journeymen of the scene such as Ian Wallace (King Crimson), Mel Collins (The Alan Parsons Project) and Keith Tippet (Centipede).
The result is a slightly uneven mix of styles, but one that keeps its footing firmly in the progressive rock camp, despite the odd slip.
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album reviews, prog rock
If your idea of a good time is something along the lines of setting light to virgins in wicker effigies, then Comus could be right up your street. Even if you harbour no such homicidal tendencies, they’re still a damn fine listen.
Comus inhabit that most spectral of sub-genres, acid-folk – A blend of the psychedelic and the folkish, underpinned by a progressive foundation. It’s an area of music renowned for its ethereal eeriness, oft-beauty, and mystical meanderings…
… Except nobody seemed to have told Comus that, for their 1971 debut, First Utterance, is, to put it bluntly, quite terrifying.
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acid-folk, album reviews, prog rock, psych-folk
If you were to head over to AMG and look up their review of Mark Fry’s Dreaming With Alice, you would find the rather iniquitous quote “… reminiscent of Donovan’s forays into that area, though not as interesting.”
How wrong could they be? Dreaming With Alice, released only in Italy in 1972, possesses a certain magic that more than exonerates the cult that has built up around it over the years. As far as obscure acid folk rarities go, this is a stone-cold classic.
In fact, the only fault that can be found in it is the fact it was released in 1972, whereas it sounds as though it were recorded at the tail-end of the 1960s. The fact that music had moved on so much in the intervening years possibly accounts for the fact it could only secure an Italian release. Of course, nearly forty years on, when it was recorded is an irrelevance.
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acid-folk, album reviews, folk rock, psych-folk
Not one for the feint-hearted when it comes to all things jazzy, 1969’s ‘Igginbottom’s Wrench (apostrophe included) was the first recording of progressive-jazz journeyman Allan Holdsworth, and though still within the realms of prog rock, it skirts closer to the borders of jazz-fusion.
Well to the ears of this fully paid-up member of the jazz-philistine club it does.
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album reviews, prog rock
In 1977, ten years on from ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale‘, Procol Harum delivered what was to be their last album for 14 years. Only lead vocalist, pianist and songwriter Gary Brooker remained from that original ‘AWSoP’ line-up, along with the lyricist Keith Reid (BJ Wilson joining on drums after the hit was recorded).
Something Magic is a fitting end to what began in 1967, seeing Procol Harum return to form following the vaguely disappointing Procol’s Ninth, with a triumphant decisive blast of the progressive, symphonic rock they had made their own over the course of a decade.
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album reviews, prog rock
In 1975, the question among a great many of those circumnavigating the spheres of post-psychedelic, progressive rock fandom, might well have been: “is Procol Harum still relevant?”
Unlike other bands that had blossomed out of late-1960s psychedelic Britain, only to fall dramatically by the wayside, Procol Harum had left the paisley shirts behind and continued to produce strong albums, clocking up number eight with the previous year’s Exotic Birds and Fruit. Even if, through all this, the spectre of the perennial ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ conspired to deny them wholesale global success.
This, the aptly titled Procol’s Ninth, arrived with a new production team and a straightforward, no-frills album cover, signalling a change in – if not the direction that Procol Harum were taking – the sound they were producing.
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album reviews, classic rock, prog rock
“Is it on, Tommy?”
So begins Procol Harum’s seventh studio album, Exotic Birds and Fruit. Words that give way to the 1974 opener ‘Nothing But the Truth’, a belter of a tune whose intent, and indeed top billing, is to address any concerns that seven years into the band’s lifespan, Procol Harum had become a spent force.
Firing on all cylinders, ‘Nothing But the Truth’ also kicks off Salvo’s final batch of reissues from the original Procol run, with Procol’s Ninth and Something Magic also seeing the light of day in digitally remastered, lushly packaged editions.
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album reviews, prog rock
Jethro Tull’s 1969 album Stand Up was the follow up to the inconsistent debut, This Was, and the first to feature Birmingham-born mainstay Martin Lancelot Barre on guitar.
It was also the album that signposted the path down which Jethro Tull (or the mighty Tull, dependant on personal opinion) were headed, largely doing away with the blues influence of the previous release and drifting, via the road of progressive rock, into more folkish pastures.
The change came about following the departure of Mick Abrahams, who’d left following creative differences between him and Tull’s main man Ian Anderson, over musical direction. When replacement and future Black Sabbath axeman Toni Iommi failed to work out it was left to Martin Barre to take up the mantle, which he did, remaining to this day.
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album reviews, folk rock, prog rock
There’s a glittering pond, somewhere beyond the grim onset of the 1980s, where floats many a progressive rock act of the 70s that have either gone on to be forgotten or never attained the recognition they might’ve hoped for in their time. Drifting on this shimmering pool of dancing light, if you look hard enough, you may well spot Khan and there 1972 oneshot Space Shanty.
Give Space Shanty a listen and it will fire itself free of the watery grave, blasting forth beyond the pull of the earth’s orbit and into the deepest and darkest reaches of the universe. A psychedelic blend of arty space-rock and progressive organ noodling provide the soundtrack.
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album reviews, prog rock
The oddball and essentially lighthearted Supersister saw a change in the ranks for 1973’s Iskander, their fourth studio album, with 50% of the four man line-up departing due to creative differences. With a new drummer in the shape of Herman van Boeyen and a saxophonist and flautist named Charlie Mariano drafted in, Supersister went all serious and recorded a concept album based upon the life of Alexander the Great.
The result was a wedge of progressive rock in the classic sense of the term.
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album reviews, prog rock
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