Now, if you’d visited HFoS a year or so back, you would’ve found a place of seething hostility, so far as the the jazz-rock was concerned. It was a musical pariah, persecuted by the very same pen that writes these words now. A lot can happen in a year though, and whereas at one time, anything hitting the HFoS Towers’ doormat intent on jazz-fusion would’ve received short shrift and a thorough kicking on the car park, nowadays the sinewy grooves of bands such as Soft Machine, Mahavishnu Orchestra and the aforementioned Isotope have been welcomed into our collective bosom, nurtured and – dare I say it – thoroughly enjoyed.

The Dancer fits into this newfound appreciation of all things fusion, somewhat perfectly.

With the help of an assorted band of musicians, including Zoe Kronberger, who also appeared on the final Isotope album, Deep End, Gary Boyle delivers a sultry collection of sounds that, as Sid Smith notes in the accompanying booklet, could easily be a continuation of that record. Nice!

There’s a sense of urgency driving much of this album, whether in the nifty finger-work of Boyle, or the often frenetic, funk-fuelled basslines that bounce around the album like Smartie-dosed five year olds. There’s also some wonderful keyboard work, courtesy, in the main, of the aforementioned Kronberger, but with contributions also from ex-Zombie, Rod Argent; Brand X’s Robin Lumley and Nucleus’s Dave Macrae.

This ivory tinkling adds a richer dimension and lends a progressive feel throughout, with Mini Moogs, String Synthesisers, Clavinets and the wondrous electric piano (surely a Rhodes), being employed as liberally as Tory legislation to kill off the poor. The Fender Rhodes (if it truly be one of these ambrosial beasts – and it certainly sounds like one) gets a fine old workout on ‘Apple Crumble’, proving that this tasty wee treat is not only one of the kings of puddingdom, but also a delectable diversion in the jazz-rock canon.

And it’s not all finger-searing exigency on the The Dancer, with laidback, mood-pieces such as ‘Now That We’re Alone’ and ‘Pendle Mist’ lending a cinematic comedown, which allows for the painting of some exquisite textures, in contrast to tighter grooves fired off elsewhere.

Electric Glide, Boyle’s 1978 follow up to The Dancer also brings in an assortment of musicians to provide the canvas upon which the ex-Isotope man lays his assorted licks. Among these is Thin Lizzy and (at the time) Colosseum II guitarist, Gary Moore, whose contributions on two of the eight tracks provides a fiery exception to what is, otherwise, a weaker album than its predecessor.

Even so, this doesn’t write it off as a bad thing. Despite the minimal use of keyboards (provided on two tracks by blind jazz pianist, Pete Jacobson), there’s still the occasional pleasing groove for the world-weary to enjoy. Indeed, without the encumbrance of ancillary prog noodling, Boyle’s prowess with his weapon of choice is really allowed to shine through.

As such, Electric Glide follows a different path to both The Dancer and previous Isotope albums, in that it’s a more clinical exercise; stripped down and laid bare, possibly intended to pull in a larger audience than the British prog/jazz rock circles could provide. Nevertheless, the technique and many-fingered chord progressions should prove enough to satisfy those appreciative of Gary Boyle’s rightly deserved reverence in the fusion hierarchy.

The Dancer and Electric Glide by Gary Boyle are both reissued on January 30^th and available for pre-order from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

So first up for 2012 and, incidentally, the 300^th post on Head Full of Snow, are these soon to be released Terry Riley reissues from Esoteric.

Not to be mistaken with sugar-coated R&B producer Teddy Ruxpin, the albums In C and A Rainbow in Curved Air, are the fruits of the American composer, who, while sporting a Mick Miller haircut, championed, influenced and became a fundamental part of the – then burgeoning – minimalist music scene. Think of a bunch of Beatniks sat around in a New York basement, smoking the contents of a herbal teabag and trying to get a tune out of a chair leg. That’s (possibly) how this movement started.

In C is a 1967 recording of a piece first written in 1964, featuring the composer himself and members of New York State University’s Center of the Creative and Performing Arts, with an array of classical instruments at their disposal. There’s no tune as such, as this is more an avant-garde exercise in musical endurance.

Seemingly repetitive upon first listen, further exploration of In C reveals it to be a gently shifting piece that subtly instils a sense of contentment in the listener; such is the belief after ten minutes that nothing’s going to change. Sit through the whole 42 minutes and you may feel you’ve been drawn into a hypnotic trance, occasionally punctuated by the desolate notes of wind and brass instruments, which, to these ears, sound as though they’re in the midst of a pre-concert tune up. But then, I doubt whether In C was ever intended for a philistine such as myself.

A Rainbow in Curved Air, first released in 1969, is an infinitely more accessible record. Containing two tracks, the first from which the title is taken and ‘Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band’; the album sees Riley playing all the instruments, chiefly the electric organ, harpsichord and a Rock-Si-Chord.

The title track is a wonderful exercise in keyboard ambience, with noodling aplenty, layered atop a steadily undulating underscore, marking it out as a precursor to what Tangerine Dream would later build a career upon.

In fact, A Rainbow in Curved Air would prove to be a guiding light for many of the era’s progressive musicians, with the likes of Mike Oldfield, Brian Eno, Pete Townshend and many more citing it as a direct influence upon their work. The band, Curved Air, even went so far as to take their name from it. High praise, indeed! Shades of both tracks are also apparent in the Soft Machine sound of the 1970s.

Whereas both albums could be described as “challenging”, they remain essential documents of an incipient stage in the birth of the progressive rock genre. In C may not garner as favourable a verdict from me as A Rainbow in Curved Air, but both will have an audience, particularly among the David Bedford and John Cage set.

In C and A Rainbow in Curved Air are both reissued on January 30^th and available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

So what festive fare have I picked randomly from the ether for you spend your Our Price vouchers on this year? Read on, my fine fellows and fellowettes:

Rick Wakeman – Journey to the Centre of the Earth

As it’s Christmas, something supremely daft is in order and they don’t come much dafter than this live recording. A man in a cape, with enough electric pianos, organs, Moogs, Mellotrons and what-have-yous to cause an energy crisis on a small Mediterranean island. The London Symphony Orchestra. The English Chamber Choir. Narration from the preposterously eyebrowed David Hemmings (following Billy Dainty’s scheduling conflict). An audience anticipating something with the subtlety of a broken bottle to the throat… What the deuce were they all thinking?

Thankfully, it’s 1974 and this type of thing was pretty much the norm in progressive rock circles. It is also quite the delightful listen, resplendent in its scope and sheer audacity, with grumpy old Rick in fine noodling form, employing the full range of his synthesised arsenal to create a weird and alien soundscape through which Jules Verne’s 19th century tale is interpreted. With Will Malone also on hand to provide the arrangements, Journey to the Centre of the Earth is a fine, if deranged, melding of the rock and classical genres, relayed via the caped wonder’s extensive modular banks.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth, by Rick Wakeman, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Fat Mattress

Formed by Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist, Noel Redding, Fat Mattress’s self-titled 1969 debut is a refreshing cocktail of psychedelic rock and proto-prog, with generous lashings of folk and bluesy elements for good measure. Undoubted highlights of this thoroughly invigorating mix are the darkly baleful and Traffic-esque ‘Mr Moonshine’, the gentle, trippy psych of ‘Walking Through a Garden’ and the soaring ‘How Can I live’, but with neither hide nor hair of a duffer among the original tracks (with 11 further bonuses on the anthology edition), this musical gateway to a mind-altered reality is an essential addition to any Santa’s wishlist.

Fat Mattress, by Fat Mattress, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

The End – Introspection

Included for no other reason than I wrote a feature about The End for Record Collector magazine earlier this year, 1969′s Introspection is a mellifluous collection of psychedelic pop, produced by no other than young William Wyman of popular beat combo, The Rolling Stones fame. Drifting harmonies and a fine line in organ textures, courtesy of sometime Spider From Mars and future record producer, Nicky Graham, provide an otherworldly ambience to tracks such as ‘Dreamworld’, ‘Under the Rainbow’, ‘Shades of Orange’ and ‘Loving, Sacred Loving’. They also add their own unique touch to Larry Williams’ ‘She Said Yeah’, the earlier Stones cover of which is featured on that irritating Bleu de Chanel advert. A full review of Introspection can be found here.

Introspection, by The End, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

The Idle Race – Time Is

Recorded and released in 1971, following Jeff Lynne’s defection to The Move, The Idle Race’s third and final album is often overlooked in the grand scheme of things, overshadowed by the previous offerings featuring their soon-to-be world famous, former frontman. True, it lacks the endearing whimsy of Lynne’s toytown-flavoured songs, but there’s still a good deal of mileage to be had from The Idle Race’s new folk/progressive rock direction. The folk flavourings are particularly strong, with the pastoral opener ‘Dancing Flower’, ‘I Will See You’, ‘She Sang Hymns Out of Tune’ and a cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s ‘Bitter Green’, all making Time Is the perfect accompaniment to slip into a drunken, late-night Christmas Day reverie.

Time Is, by the Idle Race, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Home – The Alchemist

And Christmas would not be Christmas without a spot of the fantastic, ably provided by Home’s epic 1973 concept album, The Alchemist. A tragic tale of schoolboys, wizards, imminent disaster and a Cornish fishing village makes this a narrative worthy of hungover Boxing Day morning TV, effectively set to some thumpingly good music. Previous albums from Home had enjoyed a guitar-based, more hard/country rock vibe, but in the case of The Alchemist, the four-piece roped in a keyboardist – Jimmy Anderson – and with a range of Mellotron, organ and synth arrangements complimenting the tracks, set forth along the prog rock route. The result is an admirably restrained and a sobering reminder that not all the progressive scene was about excess and grandiose statements. Sometimes the musicianship could be understated, allowing the story to shine through.

The Alchemist, by Home, is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

And there you have it, the 2011 Christmas selection pack. There should be a special Santa’s stocking prog mixtape on the way in the next few days, so I’ll refrain from wishing you a merry Christmas and making new year promises I won’t hold to, until then.

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

One such purveyor of proto-prog goodness was keyboardist and singer, Norman Haines, who fronted Birmingham band Locomotive – which, following his departure, became The Dog That Bit People – and went on to form The Norman Haines Band. As was often the case with bands from my hometown (for every Move or Traffic, there’s twenty Worlds of Oz) none of these incarnations found the success they sought and were pretty much forgotten to the purple haze of time. Good news for rare vinyl collectors, bad news for the rest of us.

Fortunately, Esoteric has completed the harvesting of these three lost gems, with the recent reissue of the Haines Band’s Den of Iniquity. First up though, is Locomotive’s 1970 album, We Are Everything You See.

An orchestral overture starts things off, leading into the magnificently sinister slice of post-psychedelic, organ-laced reverie that is ‘Mr. Armageddon’. This song, along with the garish, yet vaguely disquieting cover artwork, sets the tone for the rest of the album; a doom-laden, brown acid trip of a record, riddled with a pessimism that crushes underfoot the fading dreams of any flower child, whose head was still lodged in 1967.

This apocalyptic vision is reflected in titles such as ‘Now is the End – The End is When’, ‘Lay Me Down Gently’, ‘You Must Be Joking’ and ‘Time of Light and Darkness’, and puts one in mind of early Van der Graaf Generator. In fact, the comparisons with that infinitely more successful band are begging to be made. Whether it’s the heavy incorporation of horns, the nihilistic lyrics, or Haines’s sneering vocal timbre, which bears an uncanny similarity to that of Peter Hammill; Locomotive were ploughing a kindred furrow, albeit a short-lived one.

We Are Everything You See was completed mid-1969, but remained unreleased until 1970, by which time Haines had buggered off. The remaining two members of Locomotive, Mick Hincks and Bob Lamb, recruited a replacement keyboardist, Keith Millar, and for the first time a guitarist, John Caswell. Following a final single under the Locomotive moniker – ‘Roll Over Mary’, included among a feast of bonus tracks on the Esoteric reissue – they promptly changed their name to The Dog That Bit People and released an eponymous one off for Parlophone in 1971.

Maybe the combination of a terrible name and mind-boggling album cover conspired to ensure The Dog That Bit People remained unappreciated by a record-buying public at large. Certainly, they’d done themselves no favours on either count. A bit of a shame really, as this is not the musical nail a photograph of some old dear perched in a cluttered front room, might suggest.

The departure of Norman Haines left the band without its chief composer and it was the two newcomers who would take on the primary songwriting duties. As such, the progressive rock elements are stripped right back, resulting in a more traditional album that takes its cue, a little disappointingly, from the Californian rock scene of the time, drawing upon aspects of American folk and country rock along the way. Bloody Brummies, eh?

Nevertheless, there are still some fine moments on The Dog That Bit People, such as the Zeppish hard rock workouts of ‘The Monkey and the Sailor’ and ‘Red Queen’s Dance’ , and the very-definitely prog ‘Reptile Man’. The latter is a thrilling blend of distorted vocals, crunching guitars and thumping drums, and easily the best thing on here. Featured on the HFoS Prog Rock Halloween Mixtape (give the terrifying bastard a listen, what’s the worst that could happen?), it includes the lines “Scaly scary yellow teeth with hair down to his toes, Creeping through the slime it’s Reptile Man, They say he comes from Bilston but no one really knows…”, which, as anybody who’s ever been to Bilston will agree, sounds a pretty accurate assumption.

While The Dog That Bit People failed to set the world alight, Norman Haines had been hard at work on his own follow up to We Are Everything You See. With a new band in tow, Den of Iniquity was also released in 1971 on the Parlophone label.

The Norman Haines Band cooks up a heady brew of prog, delicately seasoned by a fine infusion of blues and folk. It is the best of the three albums, tipping its hat to the UK underground scene and the players in that particular arena of hairy, field-based antics, such as Clark Hutchinson, Skin Alley and the Edgar Broughton Band.

None moreso than on the extended (mostly) instrumental excursion that is ‘Rabbits’; 13 minutes of Hammond organ-steeped potency that wouldn’t have sounded out of place blasting from the back of a flatbed truck, somewhere along the perimeter fence at 1970′s Isle of Wight Festival.

The more than welcome misanthropy of Locomotive’s ‘Mr. Armageddon’ makes another appearance, this time titled ‘Everything You See’ and given an extra dimension by the addition of Neil Clarke’s lead guitar. But even without this remake, Den of Iniquity is a highly recommended listen, without the hindrance of filler or duff tracks that sometimes rear an ugly head upon the aforementioned albums.

With an excellent selection of bonus tracks, to boot, Den of Iniquity is the complete package and the one to go for if the budget can’t stretch to all three.

We Are Everything You See by Locomotive, the self-titled The Dog That Bit People, and Den Of Iniquity by The Norman Haines Band are all available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

If it’s subtlety you’re after, look elsewhere.

But then, nobody’s ever going to arrive at a mid-seventies album from the lead singer of Yes, expecting restraint and delicately nuanced, musical refinement. Nor would you want such a thing. It’s 1976. It’s Jon Anderson. It’s out-bloody-rageous!

Not outrageously good, nor, thankfully, outrageously bad. Olias of Sunhillow is just… outrageous. It’s also rather enjoyable, so long as the dosage is prescribed with a generous pinch of salt. Indeed, one might think that this album is a carefully constructed piss-take of the progressive rock genre. But it’s not. It’s 1976. It’s Jon Anderson. The man largely responsible for 1973′s Tales from Topographic Oceans, which is as daft as it is dull.

The sincerity of the high-pitched, musical polymath is never in question, you’ll be glad to hear, and the scope of Olias of Sunhillow is pretty much in keeping with Topographic Oceans, yet considerably more listenable… which, to be honest, isn’t quite the compliment it may initially seem.

Taking its concept from the Roger Dean artwork to Yes’s excellent 1972 album, Fragile, Jon Anderson tells the tale of the flight from a devastated alien world by Olias and the four tribes of Sunhillow, courtesy of the airborne galleon that he has built. A sort of Moorcockian Noah and the Ark, without the animals. There’s a lot of story crammed into its 44 minute running time, with a disparate cast of characters providing the focus on different songs.

Cinematic in vision, this is the musical equivalent of James Cameron’s Avatar, resplendent in all its unbridled gaudiness. That film demonstrated a complete lack of both self-awareness and control through its relentless tide of visual chintz, Olias of Sunhillow follows a similar path via the medium of music.

Tribal rhythms throw elements of world music into this particular prog pot, along with a decidely luscious array of keyboard textures that are often provided by Anderson himself, in addition to guitars, harp and assorted percussion. As I said, a musical polymath. The trademark double-tracked vocals feature, ensuring his unique voice ties in with what a man expects from Yes, and, indeed, this sounds very much like an early-70s Yes album, right down to the fact that it would be derided by humourless wankers as the antithesis of what music should be. It’s not perfect and it’s probably not suited to anybody who takes Paul Morley’s word as gospel, but it’s the kind of album a man can put on when he’s in need of a fix of lush, unapologetic pomp and grandeur, manifested in a package that refuses to entertain the idea of minimalist snobbery.

Plus, the fact that this is not Jon Anderson’s 1988 Album, In the City of Angels, is surely a recommendation in itself.

Out-bloody-rageous!

Olias of Sunhillow by Jon Anderson is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Formed to tour the 1974 album Out of the Storm, the Jack Bruce Band dig a little deeper for this particular show, incorporating, not only, that record, but also material from Song for a Tailor, Harmony Row and Cream’s Disraeli Gears.

Featuring jazz keyboardist Carla Bley; journeyman keyboardist Ronnie Leahy; late drummer with The Knack, Bruce Gary; and a post-Rolling Stones Mick Taylor, the Jack Bruce Band was a formidable assembly of musical talent, spearheaded by one of most respected bassists of the 60s and 70s. And the calibre of musicianship on display is more than evident throughout this superior live document of a troupe whose musical alignment was all too brief.

Kicking off with ‘Can You Follow?’, a faithful rendition of Harmony Row’s intro, featuring Bruce alone with his piano, the rest of the band spring to life as we hit the second track from that album; an extended version of the powerful ‘Morning Story’, featuring some wonderful Mellotron textures, courtesy of Carla Bley.

The Jack Bruce Band remains tight throughout, retaining the studio sound, while using it as a springboard from which to launch into more expressive, often improvisational, territory. Only their version of ‘Pieces of Mind’ comes close to matching the running length of the album original. For instance, a mash-up of Song for a Tailor’s ‘Tickets to Waterfalls’, the excellent ‘Weird of Hermiston’ and Harmony Row’s ‘Post War’ weighs in at a hefty 24 minutes, with plenty of enthusiastic noodling along the way.

As this is a two disc affair, the second part continues in a similar vein, with lengthy workouts of the wonderful ‘One’, ‘You Burned the Tables on Me’, ‘Smiles and Grins’, and for the aging hippies in the audience, Cream’s ‘Sunshine of Your Love’; the latter clocking in at Clapton-free 12 minutes.

Mick Taylor is on fine form throughout, providing the same no-nonsense reliability he brought to The Stones, and Jack Bruce is… well, Jack Bruce. Confident on both vocals and bass, you know pretty much what you’re getting with a 70s-era Brucie bonus and he lives up to those expectations.

Deserved of special mention are keyboard players Carla Bley and Ronnie Leahy, whose threadwork of organ, synths and electric piano weaves a mesmerising tapestry of illuminated sound from start to finish. The only criticism of the entire album would be that these two are occasionally quite low down in the mix… but hey, that’s personal preference for you.

Live ’75 is an excellent set, nicely remastered and up there with the likes of Bursting Out, Yessongs and Alive and Well, so far as live prog packages go.

Live ’75 by the Jack Bruce Band is out now and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Now this isn’t, as you would be forgiven for thinking, a concept piece based around the character of Albert “Cheerful Charlie” Chisholm, malodorous Detective Sergeant and bane of Arthur Daley’s life. The title, in fact, is an arcane reference to the home of some “spiritual guru” type, with whom Brown was involved at the time of recording. As was the done thing in the 1970s.

While the UK music scene was being rent asunder by the amphetamine-fuelled fury of a legion of bronchial ‘erberts, the original shaman of overcooked shock had mellowed a tad, and whereas brief blasts of three-chord anarchy were all the rage, Arthur wasn’t about to be swayed by the musical disposition of a new generation of acne-festooned upstarts.

Call me a shameless old name-dropper and I’ll readily plead guilty, but esteemed rock writer, King Crimson sage and all around good egg, Sid Smith, said to me on that there Twitter: “Do you ever wake up and think I’ve probably got all the Arthur Brown I’m ever going to need in my lifetime?”

As the shelves of my CD cabinet bow under the weight of Arthur’s material, I remain resolutely in denial, but following a preliminary listen to Chisholm in my Bosom, I did begin to wonder if, perhaps, I had.

The lustre is severely lacking on tracks like ‘Need to Know’ and ‘Let A Little Sunshine (Into Your Life)’, with their worrying tinges of MOR country rock; and ‘She’s On My Mind’ sits as close to the nadir of Arthur Brown’s recorded oeuvre as its possible to get without being sucked under by the awful Strangelands. One has to wonder if this is a conscious effort to infiltrate the mainstream, as though the advent of punk has sent the God of Hellfire scurrying away towards its polar opposite, in the bid to remain alternative.

But fear not, dear reader, for this is Arthur Brown, after all, and it rare that we at HFoS find him to be a complete letdown. Allow me to present the case for the defence:

‘Monkey Walk’ and the god-bothering, gospel-flavoured ‘The Lord is my Saviour’ inject some much needed life into what would originally have been side A of a vinyl-based long player. But it is a triumphant revisiting of ‘I Put a Spell on You’, nine years after recording it as part of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, that stands out here. A decidedly more laid back rendition than either his CWoAB or the original Screamin’ Jay Hawkins version, what it lacks in a frantic Vincent Crane Hammond organ swirl, it makes up for in its gradual intensification and dignified, all round execution.

The title track (which took up the entirety of the B-side 34 years ago) is a 23 minute return to form of the more experimental Brown, previously heard during the Kingdom Come era, that reassures the listener of Crazy Arthur’s ability to still produce interesting and imaginative music, regardless of some of the aforementioned rot that Chisholm in my Bosom churns out.

Which highlights the fact that, whereas the inconsistencies of Chisholm in my Bosom might’ve suggested that by 1977 Arthur Brown was a spent force, the truth of the matter was it was a mere two years away from the recording of what was possibly his finest moment. I refer, of course, to the re-teaming with Crazy World keyboardist Vincent Crane (who also appears here on ‘The Lord is my Saviour’) and the excellent Faster Than the Speed of Light.

That album is essential. This one’s just okay.

Chisholm in my Bosom, by Arthur Brown, is reissued by Esoteric and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

With a timorous and unassuming bearing, it’s difficult to equate his appearance with the fearsome sound that King Crimson produced, beginning with the heart-stopping opening to ’21st Century Schizoid Man’, right through to the closer of 1974′s Red, the wonderfully eclectic and moving ‘Starless’.

1968′s The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles & Fripp, featuring Mike and Peter Giles – both of who would feature at some point or another in the ever-changing King Crimson line-up – came out a year before In the Court of the Crimson King, the KC debut, and couldn’t sound any more different to that album if it tried. What a difference a year makes, eh?

The Derek and Clive-style album cover signposts Cheerful Insanity… as a jocular affair. There is none of the oppressive, yet exhilarating darkness that would mark King Crimson out as a force to be reckoned with, nor any of the labyrinthine complexity that was a particular feature of their sound. Instead, Giles, Giles & Fripp offer a light-hearted trip into the realms of psychedelic pop whimsy, punctuated by the unfortunate saga of one Rodney Toady (narrated by Fripp, in Python mode) and a young chap called Just George.

Leaving King Crimson aside for the moment, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles & Fripp is a singular entity, deserving of consideration beyond the marvellously extensive legacy fashioned by its noble heir.

The first thing that strikes thee about the album is the Englishness of it all. From the aforementioned cover, to the polite gent-about-town channelling of Viv Stanshall’s behind-the-mic persona. It is supremely silly in places and moderately darker in others, while treading a musical path that is – in the spirit of the tremendous talent showcased here – interesting, though in no way revolutionary for the time.

The off-kilt, gentle humour that pervades throughout is largely the concept of the Giles brothers, who are credited with writing the majority of the material hereon. Indeed, it was allegedly Peter Giles’s desire to continue along this whimsical path that saw him ousted from the original King Crimson recording line-up in favour of Greg Lake, who would take his place on both bass and vocals.

The mundanities of life come under the microscope in minor gems such as ‘One in a Million’, ‘Digging my Lawn’ and ‘Thursday Morning’, all backed by a melodic, jazz-flavoured pleasantness. Fripp has his guitar moments throughout and his technique is really allowed to find a purchase on his own composition, the oft-busy, multi-faceted ‘Suite No. 1′.

With added string contingent, brass section, backing group and Rolling Stones’ cohort Nicky Hopkins on keyboards, The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp is a beguiling and, most importantly, enjoyable romp through the green pastures of English eccentricity; a moderately more refined, less showy, take on toytown psychedelia.

As an added incentive, the bonus tracks on the CD reissue include the original version of Fripp’s otherworldy ‘Under the Sky’ (an alternative Julie Dyble sung rendition of which, is on the comprehensive The Brondesbury Tapes); later recorded by King Crimson lyricist, Pete Sinfield, and featured on August’s HFoS Prog Rock Mixtape.

The Cheerful Insanity of Giles, Giles and Fripp is reissued by Esoteric and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

I’ll tell thee. The Alan Parsons Project is what you’ve got; a collaboration between the aforementioned sound engineer, Alan Parsons, and Eric Woolfson. Together, they would release 10 albums between 1976 and 1987 under the TAPP banner, the first of which, Tales of Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allen Poe, is without a doubt the finest.

Created in conjunction with an army of session musicians and guest vocalists – Parsons and Woolfson pitching in where necessary – the 1976 debut is a masterly example of the much-derided concept album in action. Each track takes one of Edgar Allen Poe’s tales of the macabre and adapts it to a piece of prog rock loveliness. Granted, it loses something in its translation, ensuring little of the suspense or, indeed, the mystery that its source material provides, but who cares when there’s such a cracking selection of tunes on offer?

Tales of Mystery and Imagination is an album shot through with highlights, of which ‘The Raven’ (featured on August’s ‘Prog Rock Mixtape‘, for those who’ve still not heard it) comes out on top. Allegedly the first rock song to feature a digital vocoder, its lushly distorted vocal, courtesy of Parsons himself, adds a deeper dimension to actor Leonard Whiting’s lead vocal and provides the atmospheric perch upon which the rest of this outrageous concept piece is allowed to thrive.

Whereas Roger Corman had Vincent Price, Parsons has the consistently reliable, and HFoS favourite, Arthur Brown providing his unique stylings upon the frantic ‘Tell-Tale Heart’. The histrionics associated with  the “God of Hellfire” find a perfect outlet in the musical rendering of this guilt-ridden tale of madness. Whatever the crazy fucker had beneath his own floorboards in 1976 is anybody’s guess.

Future Alan Parsons Projects would sound very 1980s in their execution, as off-putting for me as your good self, I’m sure, but Tales of Mystery and Imagination remains resolutely 1970s throughout. Keyboard heavy and not afraid to let its more ostentatious persona let rip.

The duo’s classical pretensions reach fruition on the instrumental suite ‘Fall of the House of Usher’, which is carved into five sections and incorporates a fully blown orchestra in its interpretation of one of Poe’s most famous works. Subtle and audacious in turns, it provides a fittingly stylish focal point for the album as a whole, although its po(e)-faced bearing is less in tune with the purposely overwrought Grand Guignol that precedes it.

Unfortunately, the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t ruddy fix it” fell upon deaf ears in 1987, when Tales of Mystery and Imagination was remixed and an Orson Welles narration (recorded in 1976 for promotional purposes) was added. This is included on the 2-disc Deluxe Edition of the album, along with a host of other bonus tracks, including an original demo of ‘The Raven’, minus vocoder devilry.

Nonetheless, this 1976 masterpiece remains an essential slice of progressive rock; the type of which embraced studio boffinry but not to the extent that it sucked the life from it, as with future Alan Parsons Projects.

Tales of Mystery and Imagination by The Alan Parsons Project is available to buy as a Deluxe Expanded edition from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Unless, of course, you were New York’s own The Free Spirits, whose sole album, Out of Sight and Sound, is widely regarded as one of the first jazz-rock excursions. Live at the Scene captures the band in February 1967, tearing up the then legendary NYC venue, Steve Paul’s The Scene. Well, perhaps not “tearing up”, but giving it a jolly good seeing to, nonetheless.

Fronted by jazz-rock stalwart and veteran guitarist, Larry Coryell (responsible for pushing the embryonic Spirits in a rock direction), the band was a celebrated live phenomenon, some of the unbridled energy and passion of which Live at the Scene attempts to convey. And if it’s a raw, Mr. Sheen-free document you’re after, of possibly the first fusion band engaging in some psychedelically-charged, sonic livestock-worrying, then this release could be right up your jazz-rock boulevard.

Sound quality is not the priority here. In fact, you could say it’s virtually non-existent; such is the homemade, lo-fidelity nature of this recording. The liner notes make no secret of this. There was no fancy sound desk rigged up to filter out ambient noise and feedback; or ensure that the band benefitted from the cleanest sound reproduction possible. A home tape-recorder and its mono-directional mic, suspended above the stage, is all that was used to capture this performance; giving Live at the Scene the feel of a bootleg, complete with both audience and band chatter, sometimes manifesting higher in the mix than the song currently being played.

But hey, it’s 1967 and The Free Spirits give a spirited (what else?) account of their one and only album, including pared down versions of nifty little numbers like ‘Sunday Telephone’, ‘Cosmic Daddy Dancer’ and the lesser psychedelic rock anthem (here minus its intoxicating sitar), ‘I’m Gonna Be Free’. A fully jazzed-up rendition of Dizzy Gillespie’s ‘A Night in Tunisa’ closes the show, featuring an indefatigably corky guest trumpet from another American jazz-rock doyen, Randy Brecker. It’s an impressive example of a band playing at full strength; the musical cohesion that exists between all the members shamelessly on display for both the enraptured audience and the cheeky buggers, such as us, listening at home a full 44 years later.

Jazz fusion, fuelled by the progressive rock scene, would become a more malleable beast in the 1970s, with blends of the dual disciplines demonstrated in ever more innovative and exciting ways. The Free Spirits were there at the beginning; more a case of psychedelically-infused rock and jazz than the seamless entity that followed; and, as such, their groundbreaking, yet (in this instance) warts and all, labours deserve to be heard.

Live at the Scene by The Free Spirits is issued by Sunbeam Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

They don’t come much more arcane than this slice of 1977 acid folk. It began life as a private pressing of just 200 vinyl copies, which was then circulated among a selective audience. Far out!

Shot through with a lyrical bitterness that underlines Janaway’s apparent disgust with this mess of a world, through painfully crafted metaphor and the minimalist acid folk sound he employs, Puritanical Odes is six acoustic songs (entitled ‘Odes’ A to E and ‘Labour Pains’) performed on the 12-string guitar. There is no accompaniment other than the occasional haunting choral shriek and disconcerting bursts of erratic feedback.

As I said, miserable bastard! Which suits HFoS fine; we too are a hotbed of discontent and barely suppressed misanthropic rage.

Not really one to get the party going with a bang, Puritanical Odes is one man’s journey to the edge of darkness and the devastation that lies beyond. Janaway offers little in the way of hope throughout… in fact, scrub that; Janaway offers nothing in the way of hope, such is the pessimistic vibe that permeates every last note and every last word uttered in his rich and twilight timbre. But this isn’t an album about hope.

Puritanical Odes voices a frustration with life at an intensely personal level. Such was its limited pressing and method of distribution, one wonders whether something so abstractly intimate was ever intended to be heard by a wider public. The sketchy liner notes, supplied by Janaway himself, noticeably avoid mentioning the album altogether, instead offering a bio that briefly touches upon where his head may have been at the time of recording.

Still, Puritanical Odes is never a difficult listen, which is testament to Janaway’s skill as a musician and the searing complexity of his 12-string compositions. It’s certainly not for everyone, but within the framework of the 1970′s folk lexicon it provides a chilling counterpoint to the sanguine sojourns put out by the less cynical, hippified contingent.

As unsettling as Comus’s First Utterance, though at a deeper, more cerebral level, Puritanical Odes is well worth a listen, though maybe not as a fireside, autumnal warmer.

*^{Chance would be a fine thing. Instead of delicate grey mists and chilly mornings, we are presently nudging melting point with some of the hottest weather October has ever seen.}

Puritanical Odes by Bruce Janaway is reissued by Sunbeam Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Rightfully so too, as it’s a splendid seven minutes of Netherlandic nonsense, with a tongue lodged so firmly in its cheek, there’s a very real danger it might starve to death. The fact it’s a cracking good tune, to boot, only increases its appeal onehundredfold. If you’re reading this now – and how else would you know I just said that? – then there’s every chance you’re already acquainted with the rare delight that is ‘Hocus Pocus’; if not take a look at this bastard.

But that’s just one song on an album of six. Is this sum part greater than its whole? Is the brilliance bound to the buffoonery of one track? Does anybody actually care?

Moving Waves (aka Focus II) fails to maintain the considerable momentum initiated by ‘Hocus Pocus’, but then again, it makes no real attempt to. The opening track can be seen as something of a – albeit glorious – “novelty”, when put into context with the rest of the album. The remaining five tracks are serious pieces, not relying on an overriding hook, such as the one that forms the backbone of Focus’s most famous song.

‘Le Clochard’, with its Morricone-styled guitar melody and creeping Mellotron textures, lays the footings early on for the rest of Moving Waves’ self-imposed sobriety. An instrumental ensemble in all but the yodelling and insane gibberish of ‘Hocus Pocus’ and a vocal passage on the title track; Focus consistently demonstrate their off-skew musical prowess throughout the course of the album.

The fragrant, often vociferous guitars of Jan Akkerman and, of course, the keyboards and flute of Thijs van Leer dominate the proceedings, driving the album onwards to the epic conclusion that is the 23 minute ‘Eruption’. With jazzy interludes and all manner of motifs thrown into the prog hotpot along the way, Moving Waves is a tour-de-force of eccentric musicianship, combined with beltingly good compositions. The tone may be, for the most part, deliberately earnest, in stark contrast to the album’s wonderfully disorientating opener, but that detracts nothing from what is another sterling work by a band known largely – if not entirely accurately – for their cheerful brand of irreverent Dutch insanity.

Moving Waves by Focus is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Featuring what legendary bumbler John Peel would make his 1973 album of year on disc 1, remastered and given a thorough seeing to with the feather duster, as well as a previously unreleased live recording – the excellent ‘the deutschlandhalle perfomance’ – on disc 2, Atem provides a cornucopia of ambient wonders for the kosmische musik devotee.

The last album recorded for the influential Krautrock label, Ohr, prior to TD jumping ship to bearded twat Richard Branson’s embryonic Virgin, Atem comprises of four tracks: ‘atem’, ‘fauni-gena’, ‘circulation of events’ and ‘wahn’. A searching journey across the sonically-crafted landscapes of the German trio’s minds, moods and tone, dictated via the considerable Mellotron, organ and synthesiser rigs that the band employed.

High drama and slower, atmospheric compositions flow together seamlessly throughout, with the 20 minute title track a particularly fine example of this aural juxtaposition, taking in rapid-fire percussive bursts betwixt the more enigmatic, celestial passages. If you ever wished to know what the outer cosmos sounded like, while tripping on some particular potent Portabello mushrooms, then ‘atem’ is probably as good a place to start as any. Just be sure to keep on your toes, as solar flares and the occasional atmosphere-singed dog hurtle by.

‘fauni-gena’, in turn, finds Tangerine Dream’s vessel grounded and the electronic voyagers exploring an extraterrestrial, sub-tropical rainforest, resplendent with birdsong and murmurings among the flora. Remember the Genesis cave in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan? That.

Nicely rounded off with two shorter pieces – the second of which, ‘wahn’, with its avant-garde beginnings and gradual ascent into intergalactic melody, provides a fine coda to the album – Atem is a crackingly good and emotive ride; an undoubted pinnacle in the ongoing saga of Edgar Froese’s ambient soundscapers.

Atem by Tangerine Dream is reissued by Reactive and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

That said, this 1970 release by the sometime Spooky Tooth bassist and future Matthews’ Southern Comfort member, does attempt to scale the heights of anticipation its somewhat wonderful artwork inspires… for the first two tracks anyway.

‘Magician’ and ‘Get Myself Together’ are a pair of corkers. The former begins with a burst of psychedelic recorder – yes, recorder!! The weapon of choice for folkies and five-year-olds everywhere – and electric sitar, before hitting a thoroughly enchanting bluesy groove that bounces heartily along beneath Leigh’s succession of tall, cautionary tales. It’s a more progressive bent that dictates the meditative ‘Get Myself Together’ (featured on last month’s ‘Prog Rock Mixtape‘); a superior blend of ivories and mellotron that incorporates classical elements into its sumptuous arrangement via a sublimely understated electric guitar and the lilting piano coda.

An enviable start, no less. Unfortunately, the rest of the album fails to live up to these early magical murmurings, instead mostly settling into a more traditional (for the time) blues and country-rock ensemble. There are still strains of folkie seraphicalness breaking through, such as on the distant ‘Windy Baker Street’, but it’s predominately routine fare – for instance the Stones-esque ‘Solitaire’ – that Leigh produces from his wizard’s sleeve.

That’s not to say it’s a bad album. Far from it, my friend. Just not as interesting as it might’ve been. Nevertheless, Magician’s original closer, ‘Up the U.S.A.’, is nine minutes of raw, prog-blues loveliness, featuring some great guitar licks, courtesy of young Andrew, and an itchy harmonica groove from Gary Farr that augments the sleazy fug of the track perfectly.

The reissue by the meritorious Sunbeam Records includes a princely bonus track in the shape of ‘The Passing’, later to appear on the 1971 Southern Comfort album Frog City. Here in its original form and underpinned by a solemn (Hammond?) organ lament, ‘The Passing’ provides a fitting conclusion to Magician that touches upon the brilliance of its opening components.

Magician by Andrew Leigh is reissued by Sunbeam Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Releasing four, increasingly creepy albums between 1967 and 1969, the band has its place cemented in the annals of psychedelic folklore, via the personal tragedies of its individual members and the sleazy predilections of its vaguely sinister frontman, Bob Markley.

Nevertheless, those four albums live on as a testament to what was going on in the sun-soaked Californian psychedelic pop/folk scene of the late 60s, which beggars the question, what does one buy the WCPAEB fan who has it all? Well, you could do worse than Companion, a compilation of rare recordings made by the band members before, during and after the WCPAEB’s moment in the spotlight.

One for the completist, Companion pulls together 29 tracks of varying quality – and occasional tenuity in their association to WCPAEB – which stretch back as early as 1960 and culminate in 1971. The solo Markley stuff is largely forgettable, reflecting the yearning for stardom that drove the heir to an oil tycoon’s fortune to latch onto any trend that would have him during the early 60s.

It isn’t until the other band members enter the picture that things become interesting. For instance, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive’ by The Rogues, featuring guitarist Michael Lloyd and bassist Shaun Harris, is a scorching medley of electric fuzz that predates the psychedelic distortion soon to become vogue. The Laughing Wind, where Lloyd and Harris were joined by the latter’s younger sibling Danny, serves as an embryonic forerunner to the WCPAEB; lighter in tone than The Rogues and featuring the hippy sunshine harmonies that would become a bedrock of the later band’s sound. The four tracks included here prove to be inoffensive slices of West Coast flower pop, with 1966′s folky ‘Good to Be Around’, in particular, evoking a tranquil prelude to the following year’s summer of love

The WCPAEB themselves are represented by the refreshing ‘Sassafras’ and ‘I Won’t Hurt You’, the former recorded prior to Markley’s arrival and the latter a different version to that which appears on the band’s Reprise debut Part One, featuring Lloyd on lead vocals. A cover version of ‘I Won’t Hurt You’, by Brits Neo Maya (also known as Episode Six and featuring a pre-Purple Ian Gillan), is also included, providing a darker-in-tone take on the song.

Various other incarnations of musical collaborations between Michael Lloyd and the Harris brothers also feature, including California Spectrum, Rockit (with a version of ‘Blame it on the Pony Express’ that sounds uncannily similar to the Scooby Doo, Where Are You! theme) and most interestingly Brigadune, with three fine songs from 1971. The emotional ‘I’ll Cry Out From My Grave (God I’m Sorry)’ provides a particularly grim highlight, with its suicidal unburdening of a catalogue of regret to a dead lover, along with the redolent ‘Misty Mornin”.

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band Companion is a decent collection, made all the better by concentrating on the talent behind the band (Lloyd and the Harris brothers), while sidelining the odious chancer that is Markley and keeping his solo material to a bare minimum.

The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band Companion is released by Sunbeam Records and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Heralding this imminent change of season is the reissue of Jack Bruce’s 1974 album, the aptly titled Out of the Storm.

A formidable offering, it captures the prolific bassist and vocalist (perhaps most famous for making up one third of psychedelic supergroup Cream) during a particularly fruitful period of his solo years. Kicking off with the stately ‘Peaces of Mind’, a progressive piece demonstrating some fine piano-work (which also featured on last month’s ‘Prog Rock Mixtape‘), Out of the Storm maintains a strong pace throughout, never once blowing anything across the threshold akin to a dud.

High drama is the order of the day, with Bruce’s driving basslines lavishly embellished by his incorporation of a variety of key-based instruments (Fender Rhodes, organ, harmonium etc). The lyrics – courtesy of long term collaborator, Pete Brown – and vocals all veer towards the melodramatic, matching the underlying melodies perfectly and though this album is a tour-de-force of jazz/prog rock, it allows itself some heavier moments, piled high with thundering drums and scorching guitar, courtesy of Jim Keltner and Steve Hunter respectively.

The track, ‘Into the Storm’, demonstrates this powerful blend perfectly, shaking the rafters and providing a dynamic counterpoint to more enigmatic excursions such as ‘Golden Days’ and ‘Running Through Our Hands’.

For the completists out there, the Esoteric reissue offers five early mixes of selected tracks as a (Jack) Brucie bonus. All in all, a job well done.

Out of the Storm by Jack Bruce is available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Originally released in 1971, Tudor Lodge is as pleasant as an English pasture. A testament to inoffensive, folkie fun by a trio of lovely people, sporting lovely tunes.

A foul night on the beer could find a mid-morning salve from a listen to the 13 tracks that sit innocuously on this splendid reissue. Largely acoustic, this is what it sounded like in certain quarters of England during the late 60s and early 70s. Hell’s teeth! One wishes it was still the same – long hair, flutes, the occasional piano and a soft voice guiding you onto the jagged rocks, courtesy of the ethereal timbre Ann Steuart traded in.

In fact, Ann Steuart does all of the above, accompanied by the able hands of Lyndon Green and John Stannard on guitars, as well as a host of session artists (including Pentangle drummer, Terry Cox) tickling everything from the Bassoon to the occasional violin.

Pop all these seeds into a relatively fertile furrow and you’re sure to produce something as chipper as this. A joyous slice of unbridled innocence, carefully calculated to cause absolutely no offence to anybody alive, once alive, or yet to live. Whimsy, gentle harmonies and the lightness of a sea breeze drifting inland from the Devonshire coastline, are what make Tudor Lodge what it is: a bracing 45 minutes worth of folkie serenity, unburdened by cynicism.

The closest the album comes to political comment (the cornerstone upon which the majority of folk sounds have evolved) is ‘I See a Man’, regarding the poverty and plight of an old soldier, but what Tudor Lodge lacks in teeth it makes up for in melody. The undoubted highlight is the single ‘The Lady’s Changing Home’ (the B-side of which, ‘The Good Times We Had’, is included as a bonus track), with a bridge that shares more than a little in common with Bobby Bland’s ‘Ain’t No Love in the Heart of the City’, recorded three years later.

Also worthy of note are the instrumental and decidedly medieval hues of ‘Madeline’ and a spirited cover of Ralph McTell’s ‘Kew Gardens’.

All in all, music suited to a summer’s meadow and the perfect soundtrack to start the HFoS summer holidays. See you in September.

Originally released on the Vertigo label, Tudor Lodge is reissued by Esoteric and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Recorded in Germany at around the same time as the aforementioned album – but released  in 1980 – Faster Than the Speed of Light is a very different beast to the Time Actor. In fact, it’s far superior.

Brown returns intermittently to his cracked mind persona, throwing in the odd operatic burst of cheerful insanity, which finds a substantial purchase on ‘Come and Join the Fun’, a dose of ‘They’re Coming to Take Me Away’ style madness that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Kingdom Come.

The first five tracks make up a musical suite rich in orchestration (provided by the Frankfurt Symphony Orchestra), Moogs, Hammonds and whatever else Vincent Crane holds in his arsenal. It’s serious, without being laughably pretentious, while retaining a humour that doesn’t rely on the puerile.

Pretty much a summation of the whole of Faster Than the Speed of Light. It manages to walk the tightrope – incidentally, the title of track 10 – between sobriety and humour, without the need for half-cobbled sincerity or childish stunts.

There is so much that is great about Faster Than the Speed of Light that it seems pointless me trying to pin any individual detail down. From ‘Storm Clouds’, right through to the title track that closes the album, it’s all good. Crane’s keyboard textures are magnificent and Brown does what he does best, without feeling the need to scream down one’s shell-like.

In conclusion, I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that this is easily Arthur Brown’s finest since the original Crazy World album. Hell’s teeth! I’ll even take it a step further and say that it pips that album to the winner’s post. Has the world decreed itself mad? An album released in 1980, bestowed such an honour? Maybe I need a lie down.

Get it in your sweaty palm, today!

Faster Than the Speed of Light by Arthur Brown & Vincent Crane is reissued Monday 25th July 2011 by Esoteric and available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

Fetched up in Deutschland and looking for a gig, who should the now less-than-deranged Arthur spy, while out for an afternoon stroll along the strasse? None other than Richard Wahnfried. This was no hallucination; a side-effect of over-exposure to the butane fumes fuelling his incandescent hat. No, Sir Alan, this was the real thing.

It was the Richard Wahnfried, sauntering along the strasse with an independent air; you could hear the folks declare- Enough of that. What’s this rumble of discontent I hear before me? Who’s Richard Wahnfried? Who’s Richard Wahnfried? Are you serious?

Richard Wahnfried, electronic music maestro. Innovator of sound manipulation and ambient experimentalism. One of the driving forces in the German progressive/krautrock scene and visionary synth pioneer… Alright then, Klaus Schulze.

Indeed, Richard Wahnfried was the official alias of a certain Klaus Schulze, erstwhile member of Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel and extremely successful artist in his own right. The leading German exponent of synthesiser-fuelled, abstract sound production was, perhaps, a natural partner for the leading English exponent of off-the-wall creative craziness. It was like the Anglo-German Naval Agreement all over again.

Time Actor, released on Schulze’s own Innovative Communication label in 1979, is an interesting excursion for both artists. It has Schulze pursuing a more accessible – some might say commercial – sound, while Brown reigns in his more extreme histrionic tendencies, sounding as far removed from the ranting street preacher of Strangelands as it’s possible to get. It’s more a progression of what he was doing on the Kingdom Come album, Journey; mellower, less prone to abrasive outbursts, which fits the bleeps, fizzes and occasional stray solar flares provided by Schulze, infinitely better than if Brown had sported his escaped lunatic cape.

The title track, for instance, has Arthur talking some highly profound bollockry over the repetitive loops of Schulze/Wahnfried’s electronic artrock. Don’t in any way take this as being a bad thing. Although the reticence of either artist to let rip with the sort of off-the-wall performance or carefully considered abstraction they were known for, makes Time Actor sound a little subdued, the album is still full of wonderful excursions into the realms of sonic exploration.

Schulze is given his own opportunity to shine on the instrumental ‘Grandma’s Clockwork’, though don’t expect anything approaching the otherworldly originality of, say, ‘Floating’ or ‘Mindphaser’ from Moondawn. Overall though, it’s Brown who runs the show; his finely honed, chilled out persona directing things beyond the sequenced tracks laid out by Mr. Wahnfried.

Time Actor by Arthur Brown & Richard Wahnfried is reissued Monday 25th July 2011 by Esoteric and available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed

For a brief moment in 1970, keyboard-prog outfit, Aardvark, had the world at their feet… Not strictly true, but they did have a record deal and an album, which, even in a time when there were possibly more people with album deals than without, is still an achievement.

Aardvark also had a USP among prog bands of the time, in that they operated without a guitarist (a la Soft Machine, so maybe not that much of a USP). All they required were bass, drums and the considerable keyboard skills of Steve Milliner, whose Hammond organ takes the lead, filling the hole left by the absence of a guitar. On the opening track ‘Copper Sunset’, the organ actually sounds like a fuzzed-up guitar as it breaks forth with a powerful riff, accompanied by some strongarm drumming courtesy of Frank Clark.

Aardvark is an album that, for the most part, sits in the stadium arena of heavy-prog, with thumping basslines, energetic drumming and the aforementioned Hammond organ weaving its magic throughout. The vocals, from songwriter Dave Skillin, are accomplished and powerful enough to match the sheer muscle of the music, standing up to some hirsute distortion on the weighty and thumping ‘The Greencap’.

But it isn’t all heavy prog. The ten minute ‘The Outing – Yes’ starts off as a jaunty slice of energetic pop, sung like a pub coach trip to outer space, before the meat of the song kicks in and we’re treated to a lengthy workout of post-psychedelic space-rock that wouldn’t have sat awkward on the Pink Floyd debut The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, or any of the 300+ albums Hawkind released during the seventies.

‘The Outing – Yes’ slips effortlessly into ‘Once Upon a Hill’, bringing the listeners back down to earth with its pleasing foray into medieval-flavoured progressive-folk, heightened by Milliner’s wandering minstrel-esque recorder accompaniment.

The eight minute instrumental organ workout of ‘Put That in Your Pipe and Smoke It’ – the album’s original title, changed because of the drug reference – is like Rick Wakeman on speed; all swirling, vertigo-inducing melodies, breakneck drumming and finger-severing basslines, delivered at a pace guaranteed to invoke 12 points on your license and instant disqualification.

At the time of its release, the music press commented on how Aardvark had a rushed feel to it, though Melody Maker did mark the band out as being one to watch. A recommendation that proved fruitless as they quickly split, with this proving to be their only venture into the album market.

Aardvark, and indeed Aardvark, may not have set the world alight but their sole effort is sturdy enough to stand up to repeat listens and doesn’t suffer (as some reviews would suggest) from its lack of guitarist. The likes of ‘The Outing – Yes’ and ‘Once Upon a Hill’ demonstrate a diverse departure from the more standard fare on the first half of the album, with a readiness to experiment that would’ve surely been expanded upon had they managed to last long enough for a follow-up.

One for lovers of the Hammond organ and keyboard-infused progressive rock.

Edit: The newly remastered edition, knocks spots off of those previously available. The sound is crystal clear, for the first time, and doesn’t sound as though it’s been passed through a half-full Hoover bag, prior to release. Of course, it comes equipped with the obligatory booklet, featuring a great set of liner notes that finally shine some light on this once most elusive of bands. Sterling job, all around.

Aardvark is reissued by Esoteric Recordings and available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

Originally released on the Deram/Nova label, Aardvark is only available on CD as a Japanese import, more likely than not at a comedy price. However, it can be downloaded (if that’s your bag) at Amazon.co.uk

Don’t just read and applaud. Subscribe to the rather splendid RSS Feed