Tangerine Dream- Rubycon

Today I’ll take a dip into one of my favorite sub genres of prog for the first time: Progressive Electronic. What better way to start than with this 1975 album from Tangerine Dream, the most acclaimed electro-prog band? TD’s only constant member has been founder Edgar Froese, and here he’s accompanied by longer-term members Christopher Franke and Peter Baumann. All three played synthesizer. Based out of Germany, TD released four ambient albums before their seminal 1974 work Phaedra, a landmark of electronic music. Rubycon is the follow-up, and the style here is quite similar.

It’s unfortunately very difficult to write about prog-electronic because it’s extremely minimalistic and sparse. The synthesizer of choice here is the mellotron, the world’s most famous synthesizer. I can’t say which sounds are which having never used one, but I’ll try to compensate.

Rubycon is one single s/t song, divided in two, lasting 35 minutes (divided roughly equally). Part 1 starts out with some earthy, new-age like sounds, sweeping across the ear. It has almost an underwater feel to it, yet somehow is also airy. This continues for quite a while, and it relaxes well. This album is great for falling asleep to. After a little over six minutes, “Rubycon” switches to a much more sinister and artificial sound. It’s something like you’d get in a sci-fi movie during a planetary approach, and very cool. Eventually this enters a crescendo, then a decrescendo, then goes back to the more organic feel the piece started with. Thought all of this, there’s no melody per se, but there’s more structure than an ambient piece of music. Part 2 fades in with a long electronic wah sound, and ghostly effects. After a while, the signature mellotron keyboard comes in and takes it away with an awesome pseudo- melody. There’s some water sound effects, and the track fades out with what I believe to be the tron’s flute effects. A solid, solid piece of music.

It’s amazing how music can be so droning, yet so rewarding. With little in the way of a melody, “Rubycon” can’t be called a song. It is a piece, and a fantastic one. This is an album that draws you in and totally immerses you in its mood and feel. Try listening to Rubycon in the dark for an extra kick!

A wonderful piece of the semi melodic e-music that was strong in the mid to late 70’s, Rubycon rewards the listener each and every time with its great mood. Grade: A.

National Health- National Health

National Health were the last of the Great Canterbury Scene bands, with a brief two album career in 1977-78. Formed earlier in 1975, the band mostly centered around Alan Gowen, formerly of Gilgamesh, and Dave L. Stewart, formerly of many Canterbury bands like Egg and Hatfield and the North. Phil Miner on Guitar, Neil Murray on Bass, and Pip Pyle on the Drums rounded out the lineup. Since it was a super group of sorts, expectations were high for this 1977 debut. It was extensively toured, and featured contributions from Jimmy Hastings (Woodwinds), John Mitchell (Guava/Congos), and Amanda Parsons (vocals).

The first song on National Health, “Tenemos Roads”, fades in with synths before going into a keyboard and bass driven main melody. It’s a rather lighthearted one, but the bass really does sound menacing underneath. This song perfectly shows how the jazz influences in the Canterbury scene can work well in a rock context, and it was done during the rise of punk at that! When the vocal finaly does come in after nearly 6 minutes, it’s high pitched and a bit hard to understand at times, but it suits the light “day out” melody. One of my favorite Prog songs. Next up comes “Brujo”. This one is similar to “Tenemos Roads” with its light jazz influences, heavy bass, keyboard lead, however, rather than getting the listened involved, it meanders along with an adagio tempo, and latter speeds up but doesn’t pick up. Unfortunately, I can’t recommend much here, except for the jazzy guitar workout towards the end.

Side B opens with “Borogroves”, which has several movements. Some are slow and bass-filled, some showcase Miner’s guitar, some are keyboard driven. Interestingly, the digital version I purchased of National Health has this song cut in two; with part two coming before part one. Overall, a nice piece with few movements that are not up to scratch. The album wraps up with “Elephants”. Here they used some weird trickery in stereo to make some strange percussive effects. The guitar moves around well, also. This piece has the darkest mood of all involved. Midway through, we have a reprise of “Tenemos Roads”, leading to similar but slightly different patterns mixing themes from the two.

Where this album is strong comes from the great skill of each individual musician. You can tell they all really have taken time to perfect their craft extensively. As a result, there are many advanced structures spread through the album. However, many of them aren’t entirely interesting, especialy some of the more cliché parts of “Elephants” and the slower parts of “Brujo”.

On the whole, a solid album. “Tenemos Roads” alone is worth the price of admission. In the modern age of fast forwarding, it won’t surprise me if you skip some some parts, but it still has lots to offer. National Health gets a Grade of C+.

The Decline and Fall of Progressive Rock

This article is the sequel to my July Article “Growth of Prog”, on how and why Prog rock took root when it did. Today, I’ll be addressing the decline and near death of the genre during the late 70’s.

For one, by 1977, the world was getting progressively more conservative. This was the beginning of the era of Reagan and Thatcher, an increasingly reactionary time. As emphasis on education and social programs waned, so grew a group of rebellious hooligans that assembled into the punk movement. Punk rock is the polar opposite of prog rock, where it is as simple, unoriginal, aggressive, untrained, and crude as possible. While I understand the theory behind the movement and why many people enjoy that music, it has a tendency to be over aggressive towards everything it deems pompous, stuffy, and archaic. Well orchestrated Progressive rock fell under that category.

To be fair, the punks were becoming more and more correct about the pretensoiusness of prog. The big and most visible progressive bands were starting to produce poorer and poorer albums after 1975, most famously Tormato by Yes and Love Beach by ELP, the latter featuring a porn-like image of the trio on the beach for its cover. Both albums came out in 1978, a year after punk had become a major movement. The fans of The Sex Pistols and The Clash had no time for anything written outside of 4/4 time or with heavy doses of keyboards, and viciously attacked Progressive Rock. Britain, where punk was largest, soon went into an irreversible decline in output and quality of prog, which it never really recovered from.

The massive market in America also was plagued with problems, but not due to punk. The late 70’s marked the beginning of the dumbing down of American popular music that would continue through the 80’s. Catchy pop of disco acts took over everything, and almost every artist tried to make disco to compete. Prog suffered accordingly, as it is too complex to be danced to effectively. Sales declined, and when money dries up, rock n’ roll lifestyles follow. No longer could prog sell out stadiums or sell multiplatinum, except for Pink Floyd.

A rather conservative estimate would have the worldwide release of about 250-300 or so prog albums per year between 1971 and 1976. Suddenly, output declines to 200 by 1978, 160 by 1979, 120 by 1980, to less than 100 by 1982. Many of these albums wallowed in rarity as just Floyd and perhaps Rush maintained levels of popularity prog bands could have seen ten years prior. According to estimates by http://rateyourmusic.com/ , production bottomed out in 1987 with just 45 albums before neo-prog and prog metal movements started to up the count.

The question remains if the spirit of classic prog can make a major comeback. Besides Änglård and similar revivalist groups, little has come forth. The end of the conservatisim that prevents prog from growing, however, seems to have come with the election of Obama to the presidency. Perhaps we might just get a neoclassic prog movement.

Fab Four Forever!

John, Paul, George, Ringo. Four young men from Liverpool who changed music forever. Yesterday, the long awaited remastered catalogue of The Beatles became public domain. I've been waiting about 5 years for these myself, and I must take a time out from 20 minute epics to say a few words on The Beatles, and their relationship to Progressive Rock.

Where The Beatles begin to do something novel starts on Rubber Soul, with the Fish Eye Camera and Eastern Influences. Yet, Revolver is where they became the true Grandfathers of Prog. Just listen to "Tomorrow Never Knows" and we get blasted with all sorts of sonic experimentation and weird effects, and where do we find that again? In Prog, of course. The Beatles were the first to take in all that new studio trickery, and the first to make experimentation sell like mad. We go from teen crooners producing commercial, least common denominator pop to fun and strange new sounds and directions over a period of just 3 years, and in large part because the fab four wanted to. Sgt. Pepper, of course, takes the trend even farther, with the whimsy and all over the place "Mr. Kite", the segues between songs, the colorful and detailed album art, it truly could be a prog album if it weren't for "She's Leaving Home" and "When I'm 64." So many prog bands have namechecked the Beatles, and particularly this album, as a major influence. With Magical Mystery Tour, we've got more of the same new groove trying to raise the bar for rock music and make it even more artistic, beautiful, and challengeing. Sadly, internal struggles cause the White Album and Let It Be to have a large absence of that spirit, and I feel Abbey Road, while amongst the Beatles' strongest, is not nearly as progressive as contemporary works.

The remastering brings out the intricacies that were hard to detect on CD, which gives more reason to examine the contributions The Beatles Made. I hope you all get to hear them soon, for I have not and can't comment.

Hawkwind- In Search of Space

It’s been a while since we did a space rock album, so today I’ll review In Search of Space, the second album by Hawkwind, one of the big names in the subgenre. The group formed in 1969 in London. The only permanent member, Dave Brock (guitar/vocals) is obviously here, along with Nik Turner (sax) Terry Olis (drums), Del Detmar (Keyboards), Dik Mik (yes, that is his name)(keyboards), and Dave Anderson (bass). This album, released in 1971, is their second. The lineup went through constant changes soon after its release, and the song “Silver Machine” got the band some recognition (it appears as a bonus track). For now, however, they had yet to emerge as Space Rock giants.

In Search of Space opens with the 15:42 “You Shouldn’t do that”, one of the most epic psychedelic trips you will ever encounter. After some synthesizer wahs leading into the main body of the song, the guitar chords begin to play and the bass starts a melody. From there, we have a textbook psychedelic jam, with 4/4 timed drums, random, distorted sax, nonsensical lyrics, strange electronic noises, and an overall disoriented feeling. It meanders along, on one hand quite minimalisticly, but on the other, absolutely filled with massive bass feedback and eeriness. Definitely the tour de force of early Hawkwind. Since it last so long, the only other song on side A is “You Know You’re Only Dreaming”. This song fades in and also relies heavily on the bass riff. The vocals are a lot clearer on this track. This song has much less psychedelic overload, but meanders on in a much spacier way. With a little stretch, this song sounds a bit like something Hendrix would do.

Next up is “Master of the Universe”, a song heavily resembling “You Shouldn’t do that”. Even the riffs and melody are highly similar. However, it’s less than half the length and includes some cool distant vocals and stop/starts. “We Took the Wrong Step Years Ago” follows, and boy does this seem out of place on In Search of Space. It’s an acoustic ballad right in the middle of a Space Rock album. Not too often do we find such a sweet little piece of work n a place like this, but it has got the most intelligible lyrics on the album, and honestly is my favorite track here (although not by much). After this weird shift, we return to the psychedelics on “Adjust Me”. Here we have lots of wah-wah guitar, sped up and slowed down vocals, and sparse parts held down with just sound effects and the cowbell. This one defiantly doesn’t live up to the massive psychedelic bonanzas earlier on the album. The album closes out with “Children of the Sun”, another acoustic piece. At 3:22, it is the album’s shortest, and it truly is an afterthought and forgettable.

The weirdness of this album is even more extreme with the original vinyl. It included a 24 page booklet called “The Hawkwind Log”. The first page featured a nude with "TECHNICIÄNS ÖF SPÅCE SHIP EÅRTH THIS IS YÖÜR CÄPTÅIN SPEÄKING YÖÜR ØÅPTÅIN IS DEA̋D" plastered in massive in massive print on top of it. I wasn’t able to uncover the full text online (I only own this album digitally), but you can find the images of the book here and you can read some exscripts here. After this album, Hawkwind would go on to many more highs and lows, and included amongst its members Lemmy Kilmister, later of Motörhead, and Ginger Baker, formerly of Cream. With the releases of many official bootlegs, they also have discography that is absolutely impossible to follow, perhaps the biggest in prog!

In Search of Space is a weeeeeeird little album. The psychedelic jamming might not be to everyone’s taste, but if it’s your cup of tea it’s done very well here and I’d highly recommend it to you. Grade: B-