RASCAL REPORTERS

Redux Vol 1/We’re God/Happy Accidents BANDCAMP Treasure trove of expanded American alt-prog.

When it comes to progressive rock’s sub-genres such as Canterbury or RIO, the immutable law of Egg’s Seven Is A Jolly Good Time from 1969 is usually applicable. Roughly paraphrased, it states that as sure as night follows day, the minute a straightforward 4/4 beat takes hold in a song, you can bet that a tricksy time signature shift will quickly pop up to subvert any expectation of metronomic certainty.

Steve Gore and Steve Kretzmer were clearly taking note of this when they formed Rascal Reporters in Detroit in 1974, their first commercial offerings in the 80s featuring guest members of Henry Cow. Recording music at an alarmingly prolific rate, by the time

Steve Gore died in 2009 hundreds of hours of music had amassed, much of it unreleased or uncompleted.

The arrival of producer and musician James Strain to collaborate with Kretzmer in 2019 has resulted in the pair working on new projects including Redux Vol 1, an album of material originating from the 70s and 80s, a remaster of the 1980 cassette release We’re God and an expanded digi edition of 1988’s Happy Accidents.

All three keyboarddominated albums, filled with acute twists in tempo and abrupt timbral changes, speak to the original duo’s near-obsessional love of contrary and contrasting variations in progressive rock elements. The debt of gratitude owed to Egg/ Hatfields/National Health is especially apparent. Frantic changes in pace occasionally overwhelm and on the earlier albums there’s a shrillness that in some cases feels counterproductive; ‘never mind the quality, will you look at the quantity of notes we’ve shoehorned into this track?’ Similarly, the humour of We’re God quickly wears thin.

Nevertheless, when they’re good they’re really good and the hit rate across these three albums is pretty high. Juggling sunlit Beach Boys voicings, luxuriant melodicism, and jaunty marches, Happy Accidents’ 25-minute Stabbing At Air imagines a turbo-charged kaleidoscopic hyper-pop that’s endearing and enduring.