VARIOUS ARTISTS
Excellent three-CD boxset offers a different spin on the classic progressive years.
The Beatles may have first shown that popular music didn’t have to stay tethered to rock’n’roll, but numerous bands followed in their wake, pushing at boundaries and ripping up conventions: a generation of young people determined to treat their music as art rather than commodity. Many bands worked under the cover of first psychedelia, then progressive rock, but didn’t actually fit neatly into any genre. And ironically, as albums rather than singles became the main cash cow of the music industry, experimentation was positively encouraged, bringing players in from the more esoteric margins who wouldn’t previously have had a hearing.
Soft Machine were early exemplars of this new imperative, so it’s apt that I Should’ve Known leads this comp, Robert Wyatt’s teasing voice over rarefied garage rock, Daevid Allen’s exploratory guitar against an alternately pounding and reflective rhythm track. Other early highlights include The Zombies’ Butcher’s Tale, which combines
musique concrète and high church organ with eloquent anti-war lyrics, and The Strawbs’ The Battle, which turns the narrative folk form into a dramatic movie for the ears. Yes, Genesis and Procol Harum are present, as is a beautiful early version of I Talk To The Wind by Giles, Giles & Fripp. There are also timeless classics such as Mighty Baby’s Egyptian Tomb and Matching Mole’s O Caroline.
But it’s the more obscure acts here that really knock you sideways. There’s The Liverpool Scene’s astonishing Tramcar To Frankenstein, doomy jazz poetry that ends up as hard-driving space rock. The Velvet Frogs’ Wasted Ground sounds like a recording of a medieval monastery under siege from barbarians, while the moody Greek tragedy of Bachdenkel’s Through The Eyes Of A Child is just wonderful. Elsewhere, Rupert Hine’s modern classical Anvils In Five is unnervingly austere, and Ron Geesin’s Under Composition reveals him to be the avant-garde Ivor Cutler.