Clark-Hutchinson – Free to be Stoned

Clark-Hutchinson were two hirsute hippies so stoned they thought the recording studio was a field somewhere in deepest Somerset. God bless ‘em.

That can be the only the reason they saw fit to put out albums as though they were playing at a festival. And you could do worse than getting stoned yourself prior to listening to this. I didn’t and still enjoyed it. Imagine what it would be like having smoked half a kilo of Dutchman’s fancy, or even tripping on an acid-soaked Yellow Pages.

Heavy, man. REAL heavy.

Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology is a two disc affair, collecting together the lion’s share of these fabulous furry freak brothers’ Decca output, recorded between 1969 and 1971. I say lion’s share as there’s no inclusion of the tracks from debut album Clark-Hutchinson, which Decca refused to release on the grounds that the track ‘Make You’ was obscene. But that’s a very different sounding album and not really missed when you tot up what we’ve got here.

1969′s A=MH² – Check. 1970′s Retribution – Check. 1971′s Gestalt – Check. It’s all here, all present and correct and in the appropriate order.

Disc 1 takes the five tracks from A=MH² and also slips in the first two tracks from Retribution at the end, presumably for purposes of space.

Extensive instrumental workouts are the order of the day in the first instance, solely delivered by the two named players, Andy Clark and Mick Hutchinson. They were multi-instrumentalists and veterans of the underground scene, having played with, among others, psychedelic tabla abuser, Sam Gopal.

The opening track, the ten minute ‘Improvisation on a Modal Scale’, features a horrendously catchy hook and lays the foundations for what’s to come, in its implementation of all manner of instrumentation and heavy misuse of a guitar. Only the Eastern-influenced ‘Improvisation on an Indian Scale’ can match it for intensity, hitting the 13 minute mark and leaving you to wonder who snuffed out the joss-sticks.

For Retribution, here spread over the two discs, they kept to the five song format but hauled in a band to help out along the way. When you’re bassist’s name is Amazing Steven Amazing, you know things are going to be good. This time around they also included lyrics, which are howled in a manner that suggests somebody was stood on vocalist Andy Clark’s foot.

But this is music designed to be belted from a stage in the general direction of an audience made up of wild hair and joints the size of a Danvers carrot. ‘Free to be Stoned’ backs this assertion up and, despite the jazzy glitch of ‘After Hours’, things continue in pretty much the same vein, finishing with the Arthur Brown-esque ‘Death, the Lover’, which pummels the listener into a lysergic submission with its vocal refrain repeated over in a manner guaranteed to leave small children disturbed for the next twenty years of their lives.

Gestalt, Clark-Hutchinson’s final album is a less in your face offering (though ‘Poison’ begs to differ), but one that remains tuned to the late sixties/early seventies festival crowd. The songs are shorter but they continue the acid rock, freak out feel with the definite scent of something a little stronger than herbal tea leaking from the speakers throughout.

As said somewhere at the start of this review, what seems like a short lifetime ago, you don’t need to be hairy, a hippy, or sat in a field smoking the contents of granny’s window box to enjoy Free to be Stoned. I did say that, didn’t I?

Of course, if you’re any of the above, it may well enhance your enjoyment.

If you’re a connoisseur of the Great British underground, a place inhabited by a sterling assortment of hairies such as Arthur Brown, the Edgar Broughton Band, Mighty Baby, Quintessence, Sam Gopal and the ubiquitous Hawkwind, then this will be right up your street. Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology gets the seal of approval and is another strong release from the label that’s putting all others to shame with its prog and psychedelic reisssues, the mighty Esoteric Recordings.

Free to be Stoned – The Complete Decca Recordings Anthology by Clark-Hutchinson is a two disc set, available to buy from Amazon.co.uk

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album reviews, freak rock, prog rock, psychedelic rock