Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon

Released - March 1973

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Pink Floyd

Selected Personnel - David Gilmour (Vocals/Guitar/VCS3 Synthesiser); Roger Waters (Bass/Vocals/VCS3 Synthesiser/Tape Effects); Richard Wright (Keyboards/Vocals/VCS3 Synthesiser); Nick Mason (Percussion/Drums/Tape Effects); Dick Parry (Saxophone); Clare Torry (Vocals); Doris Troy (Backing Vocals); Lesley Duncan (Backing Vocals)

Standout Track - Money

When going through music history chronologically like this, every now and again you come up against an album of such enormity that the prospect of reviewing it just seems immensely daunting and futile. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was one such album, but at least there I had the vague novelty of being able to talk about the fact that I don't like it quite as much as most music fans. But with Pink Floyd's landmark masterpiece The Dark Side Of The Moon, there's very little I'm able to say that hasn't already been said better elsewhere. This is an album whose legacy, while totally earned by the brilliance and the inventiveness and the importance of the music within it, is so enormous that it's hardly worth discussing any more. Still, no list of the greatest albums would be complete without it, so in I go.

Inevitably, The Dark Side Of The Moon was the first Floyd album I actually listened to and, as usual with artists that I end up truly loving, it was after I'd spent a fair amount of time (perhaps a year or so) actively resisting any recommendations to listen to them because, from what little I knew about them, they struck me as too artsy and ponderous (this was when I was still principally listening to upbeat pop rock and before prog had taken hold of me). Via my love of Supertramp, though, it soon became clear that doors to new kinds of music were being thrown open, and Pink Floyd seemed to be one of the major ways in. I listened to my stepdad's copy of Dark Side... while visiting home for Christmas in 2008 and that was that. It was therefore a major stepping stone towards my discovery of a huge amount of music I now love unreservedly, including, of course, the vast majority of Floyd's discography, and that personal significance is just another string to its bow in terms of the enormous number of cultural and historical points of relevance it has established over the years.

It's fair to say, though, that Floyd had taken time to arrive at the brilliance on show here. Their early psychedelic nonsense under original bandleader Syd Barrett had been fairly eccentric and endearing but has always ultimately left me fairly cold, and after his departure and rapid descent into mental instability, the band had taken time to push forwards into uncharted territory, continually managing to develop twin disciplines of both challenging artistic boundaries and utilising new technologies or musical styles to inform their work, while at the same time becoming an ever tighter and more commercially appealing band. 1971's Meddle, while it had included the magnificent 23-minute epic "Echoes," had seen them able, for the most part, to focus their songwriting efforts into short, coherent songs rather than sprawling, semi-improvised instrumentals as on albums like 1968's A Saucerful Of Secrets. That was a direction they continued moving in, aiming to make something that had all the artistic and intellectual merit and rampant creativity of their work so far, but that condensed it all into something gloriously simple. While the band was yet to fall totally under his tyrannical, autocratic sway, it was bassist Roger Waters who set about creating the overall template for the album that was to come, writing lyrics that followed a single unified theme looking at the things that "make people mad" - greed and consumerism on "Money," the ravages of ageing on "Time," personal relationships on "Us And Them," mental illness itself on "Brain Damage," and so on. It's a very loose precept off which to hang a concept album, but the idea of bringing each of these individual songs back to a central concept enabled the band to create a unified song-cycle, each song segueing seamlessly into the next.

The sense of a unified theme was further developed by the fragmentary voices that are scattered across the record, consisting of roadies and technicians that the band would interview about mental health, death, ageing and the like in order to splice in their contributions, from the famous opening chuckles and confession of "I've been mad for years, absolutely fucking years" to the climactic "There is no dark side of the moon." Many of the album's sonic collage elements, from the looping of cash register sound effects for the iconic rhythm track to "Money" were developed via collaboration with the album's engineer, a certain Alan Parsons who would go on to be the leading svengali figure of the Alan Parsons Project, one of the most gloriously glossy pop-rock acts of the late 70s and another of my all-time favourite bands. But, while the loops and ethereal voices and innovative recording techniques might all inform the album's mystique and sense of technical innovation, it is of course in the music itself that the true brilliance lies.

"Speak To Me" is one of Nick Mason's very few solo compositional credits in Floyd's history, consisting of a collage of assembled sounds, including the album's famous slow heart-beat intro, before the sound of distant screaming ushers in the languid, lazy guitar squalls of "Breathe," whose sense of wide-eyed haziness in the music is matched perfectly by David Gilmour's airy vocals. It's followed by perhaps the album's only mild disappointment in "On The Run," a piece of music supposedly exploring Roger Waters's fear of flying that seems to get so excited by the opportunity to have fun with new-ish synthesiser effects that it forgets to do anything particularly compelling musically. It's followed by "Time," easily the most epic song on offer and perhaps the nearest thing to the starkly cinematic grandeur of their earlier pieces like "Echoes" or "Atom Heart Mother Suite." From the opening crashes of clock chimes and the slow, ominous intro into its bellowed opening vocal "Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day," it builds in intensity into Gilmour's magnificently epic guitar solo before ushering in a more restrained reprise of "Breathe." Sounding declamatory and angry on "Time" after being so laid-back on "Breathe," Gilmour really proves himself as a great vocalist on The Dark Side Of The Moon for perhaps the first time, having so far been most notable for his incredible guitar work on the band's earlier albums. But here, shouldering the majority of the lead vocals himself, he proves himself a singer of real depth too.

"The Great Gig In The Sky" is one of the band's great unusual masterpieces, starting with Richard Wright's meditative piano and the vocal snippet "I am not frightened of dying" before exploding into a more incendiary organ part and providing a showcase for the remarkable vocal talents of Clare Torry, whose non-lexical vocal bavado is an absolute tour de force. For years there would be an ongoing legal debate over whether Torry should receive a writing credit for the song, which was ultimately settled decades later, and it's certainly fair to say that it would be a wholly less compelling piece of music without her incredible vocal contributions. The album's second side kicks off with the aforementioned ringing of cash tills that ushers in the most iconic bassline in the history of prog rock, and one of Pink Floyd's truly great classic rock songs. That bouncy bassline and the sarcastic bite of Gilmour's vocals render it an undeniably fun, if savagely felt, song, before Gilmour's incendiary guitar solo kicks the whole thing into another gear. There's a significant shift in tempo into the slow, reflective "Us And Them," a beautiful organ-driven song that gives plenty of room for occasional Floyd saxophonist Dick Parry to explore in.

In perhaps the album's finest segue, the meditative strains of "Us And Them" dissolve into the almost jazz-fusion-esque, spacey jam of "Any Colour You Like," where Gilmour's distorted guitar trades licks with Wright's swirling organ, and there follows a pretty much perfect closing double whammy with the psychedelic, almost Barrett-esque meditation on madness that is "Brain Damage," where Roger Waters sings the lead vocal for the first time on the album, his more nasal and menacing tone proving a great counterpoint to the cleaner vocals we've had from Gilmour and Wright so far. The crashing of organs builds to the triumphant, explosive fanfare of "Eclipse" that is so powerful it doesn't even bear talking about. Just listen to it now.

In fact, of course, The Dark Side Of The Moon is an album of such repute and of such musical power that even trying to describe any of the music in an attempt to enlighten the uninitiated feels unnecessary - it's quite simply just an album that everybody has to have listened to at some point, and is perhaps the most iconic and commercially successful peak of progressive rock. For my money, it's actually not Pink Floyd's finest album - its brilliance in condensing the band's artistic vision into something simple and coherent and song-based is a great achievement, but for me The Wall in 1979 managed to achieve the same musical heights while also boasting greater ambition and character, but it's impossible to deny that The Dark Side Of The Moon has to be regarded as one of the finest moments in the history of rock music. After years of slowly trying to establish their sound and work out where they were going, Pink Floyd had finally proven themselves to be one of the finest bands of their generation, and the world rewarded them for it as the album became a global smash hit. Having finally come in from the cold, Floyd were free to do what they wanted, and for their next outing they would return to the longer-form songwriting of albums like Meddle. They had won their mainstream fanbase, and now they could take them wherever they wanted, so the next step would be a far more direct and haunting exploration into madness than the glimpses seen on The Dark Side Of The Moon.

Track Listing:

1. Speak To Me (Nick Mason)

2. Breathe (Roger Waters, David Gilmour & Richard Wright)

3. On The Run (David Gilmour & Roger Waters)

4. Time (David Gilmour; Roger Waters; Richard Wright & Nick Mason)

5. The Great Gig In The Sky (Richard Wright & Clare Torry)

6. Money (Roger Waters)

7. Us And Them (Roger Waters & Richard Wright)

8. Any Colour You Like (David Gilmour, Roger Waters & Richard Wright)

9. Brain Damage (Roger Waters)

10. Eclipse (Roger Waters)

Paul Giovanni - The Wicker Man

Released - December 1973

Genre - Folk

Producer - Paul Giovanni

Selected Personnel - Paul Giovanni (Vocals/Guitar); Peter Brewis (Recorder/Harmonica/Bass); Andrew Tompkins (Guitar); Michael Cole (Bassoon/Concertina); Ian Cutler (Violin); Bernard Murray (Percussionist); Gary Carpenter (Piano/Recorder/Fife/Lyre); Annie Ross (Vocals); Lesley Mackie (Vocals); Christopher Lee (Vocals)

Standout Track - Gently Johnny

I set a vague rule when I first started on this blog that soundtrack albums weren't allowed. As I've already demonstrated, and will continue to periodically demonstrate as time goes by, periodically that's a rule I'll break. The same goes for my "no live albums" rule. Essentially, if a soundtrack or live album is of genuinely great cultural or personal significance, then I'm happy to break my own arbitrary rules. Paul Giovanni's soundtrack to Robin Hardy's immortal The Wicker Man is both - as a teen, I became obsessed with cinema long before I became obsessed with music to the extent I am now, and The Wicker Man was a film I sought out at a young age because everything about it fascinated me. I was a weirdly serious-minded teenager with a head full of fantasy and the macabre and a penchant for high drama, this being long before I realised I had the most fun being stupid rather than portentous and discovered comedy. Everything about The Wicker Man, then - its paganistic imagery and dramatic flair - appealed, and I quickly sought it out. Years and years after I first saw it, what's stuck with me most is its incredible soundtrack. And it feels of cultural significance due to the fact that, despite being recorded years after the genre's decline, it feels effectively like the pinnacle of the psychedelic folk movement as pioneered by the likes of Donovan and the Incredible String Band.

The soundtrack is unconventional in a sense, in that it involves very little incidental music or orchestral score (there are a couple of instrumental numbers that underscore the action), but largely of fully-fledged folk songs that are incorporated into the action itself as an integral part of the film's plot. Hardy's film attempts to really plunge the viewer into the paganistic and ritualistic world of Summerisle, and acutely understands that a key part of such a world is its sense of festival, of live performance and music. As such, folk singer-songwriter Paul Giovanni was drafted in to compose a number of ancient-sounding acoustic folk songs to become integral parts of the film, to be recorded by Giovanni himself and a folk band assembled specifically for the recording of the soundtrack, named Magnet. Giovanni manages to achieve a similar effect in his music to that of Vashti Bunyan in her endlessly lovely 1970 album Just Another Diamond Day, in that he's able to compose original tunes that sound like they've existed for hundreds of years. Only a few of the album's tracks, like "Procession" and "Chop Chop" are actual traditional folk tunes arranged by Giovanni, the majority are original pieces composed very much within the musical traditions of ancient folk music, so that everything here sounds very much like a part of an ancient tradition built on the land and the seasons and the natural world.

The instrumentation is kept deliberately simple and largely focusing on traditional instruments rather than modern ones, from fiddle and drum to recorder and lyre. The music, despite all existing within this traditional, earthy realm, manages to span a wide range of moods and tones as well, from the sunny mellow feel of opener "Corn Rigs" to the dark, moody menace of "Gently Johnny" or the apocalyptic horror of "Summer Is A-Cumen In" that accompanies the film's iconic final scene as Sgt. Howie is burned alive in the titular wicker man. The sequencing of the soundtrack album leaves a lot to be desired, sadly - most of the fully-fledged songs are lined up in the first half, with the slightly less compelling instrumental or incidental numbers making up the second half, meaning it becomes progressively less musically interesting as it goes on. One can't help but feel that the sequence should have just been left as the order of appearance within the film, but it's a small complaint to make in the grand scheme of things.

"Corn Rigs" makes for the perfect opener, effortlessly setting the scene within this traditional, pre-Christian world of folk music via a breezy melody and carefree atmosphere, and the ensuing "The Landlord's Daughter" is a raucous number to set the scene within the community of Summerisle itself, relying on fiddle and rowdy choral singing to establish the mood. "Gently Johnny" is one of the two real showstoppers on the album, and one of the very finest folk songs ever composed. It accompanies a scene bewilderingly cut from the theatrical version of the film, in which Christopher Lee's Lord Summerisle quotes Walt Whitman's "I think I could turn and live with the animals" while Edward Woodward's Sgt. Howie prays in his room and the townsfolk sing of seduction downstairs. It has all the smoky and bleary-eyed darkness of late-night rumination, and is a peerlessly brilliant folk song. "Maypole" and "Fire Leap" are directly concerned with island rituals, the first for a Maypole dance by the village's children, the second for a ritual in which the community's young girls dance naked around a fire, conveying innocence and playfulness in the first and unnerving menace in the second. "The Tinker Of Rye" is a more straightforward song in which Lee demonstrates a genuinely good (albeit characteristically stentorian) singing voice.

Then there's the album's other true high-point, and the song that's perhaps seen the greatest afterlife beyond the soundtrack itself, in the form of the hauntingly beautiful "Willow's Song," which has been covered by a number of other artists. Sung by landlord's daughter Willow as she dances naked around her room in order to torment the puritanical Howie next door, its ghostly melody (sung by Annie Ross, as Swedish actor Brit Ekland found it difficult to sing convincingly without her native accent) soars over the shimmering violin and the cooing of recorders, and easily ensconces itself as one of the most unforgettable psychedelic folk songs you could ever hear. From then on, things get gradually less exciting - there's a series of instrumental pieces that underscore the celebrations and festivals of the islanders (the aforementioned, brass and percussion-centric chorus of "Summer Is A-Cumen In" is frighteningly intense and stands out amongst this sequence of pieces), and "Opening Music" involves a brief but lovely folk melody sung by Lesley Mackie over recorder harmonies to accompany Howie's arrival on the island by plane. Then there follows a number of other incidental pieces, including a frantic chase sequence to accompany Howie's desperate search of the island, all of which are pleasant and interesting but hardly truly essential listening. The album finishes with the brass rendition of the stark, apocalyptic "Sunset" to usher in the film's final moments.

The Wicker Man soundtrack belongs very much to a songwriting tradition that had all but died out by the time of its release. Traditional folk music was becoming ever more pop-oriented, while the psychedelic strains of songs like "Willow's Song" belonged to a movement in folk music that had effectively withered and died in the late 60s. As such, it acts as a kind of timely reminder of just how evocative and powerful such traditional forms of music could be at their height, and is a brilliant example of why it's important for music to look backwards as much as forwards for inspiration - just as people would continue innovating with new technologies and production techniques in the ensuing decades, others would continue to mine traditional folk music in order to create something new out of something ancient, rarely to such brilliant effect as Giovanni. The soundtrack itself would not be released in its own right until 1998, by which point renewed interest in traditional folk music might have driven the need for such an iconic collection of songs to be given a proper release. Giovanni himself, sadly, never went on to do much more than this moment of brilliance. Also a playwright and director, he wrote a play entitled The Crucifer Of Blood that was staged and filmed for TV, but there was no further musical output from him of any note. A shame, as the music he composed for The Wicker Man demonstrates a phenomenal talent, somebody who is able to take minimal ingredients - sparse instrumentation and traditional song forms - and weave something truly magical and powerful out of them. Honestly one of the finest, and most original, film soundtracks of all time.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Paul Giovanni except where noted.

1. Corn Rigs (Robert Burns, arranged by Paul Giovanni)

2. The Landlord's Daughter

3. Gently Johnny

4. Maypole

5. Fire Leap

6. The Tinker Of Rye

7. Willow's Song

8. Procession (Traditional, arranged by Paul Giovanni)

9. Chop Chop (Traditional, arranged by Paul Giovanni)

10. Lullaby

11. Festival/Mirie It Is/Summer Is A-Cumen In (Traditional, arranged by Paul Giovanni)

12. Opening Music/Loving Couples/The Ruined Church (Robert Burns, arranged by Paul Giovanni)

13. The Masks/The Hobby Horse

14. Searching For Rowan

15. Appointment With The Wicker Man

16. Sunset

Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends

Released - April 1968

Genre - Folk Rock

Producer - Simon & Garfunkel & Roy Halee

Selected Personnel - Paul Simon (Vocals/Guitar); Art Garfunkel (Vocals); Hal Blaine (Drums/Percussion); Joe Osborn (Bass); Larry Knechtel (Piano/Keyboards)

Standout Track - Mrs Robinson

Another brief foray out of chronological order (we're up to 1973, remember) - this has been a week of listening to old albums, some of which have been impressive enough to get themselves a place on the list, hence the jumping back in time. This time, it's the Simon & Garfunkel album I've always had recommended to me considering I enjoy their other work, but have always struggled to find time for, for no real reason other than arbitrarily prioritising other things to listen to. A friend of mine named Fearchar, who has always been, I think, the biggest and most vocal Simon & Garfunkel fan among my friendship group, has always cited Bookends as his favourite and, while for me it doesn't match up to the excellence of either Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme or Bridge Over Troubled Water, it's some way ahead of the more tentative and faltering Sounds Of Silence, both in terms of the craft and intelligence put into its production, and in the quality of much of the material.

After the immense success of the duo in the wake of Sounds Of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary & Thyme, they were soon contacted by the director Mike Nichols, who was keen to recruit Paul Simon's songwriting talent to compose a soundtrack for his film The Graduate. As we all know now, the duo eventually agreed, resulting in some of the most popular music of their career, though Simon was initially reluctant to sell out by working for the film industry rather than staying true to his artistic and musical visions. Bookends is, at least in part, a sort of direct follow-up project from their wildly successful soundtrack album, and features a slightly re-recorded version of their huge hit "Mrs Robinson," as well as a number of other songs originally written for the soundtrack but dropped from it. Since 1966, however, when their last album had been released, it's obvious that the dynamic in the duo had shifted slightly. In my review for Bridge Over Troubled Water, I wrote about how inevitable the sense of the duo's impending split feels - the vocal harmonies of Art Garfunkel feel increasingly irrelevant and unnecessary, and that sense is strong here too. The album, in a first for the duo, is carefully structured around a concise song cycle that takes up the first side, a concept entirely orchestrated by Simon, and much of the material either doesn't bother to include Garfunkel's harmonies at all, or really relegate them almost to the point of not being needed. When they happen, they're typically pretty and enchanting, as ever, but it's obvious that Simon's increasing sense of artistic control and musical innovation was moving them away from the simple folk songs of their earlier work, meaning Garfunkel's contributions were increasingly limited.

That said, Garfunkel's most significant contribution here is in co-authoring and developing its worst track, the fairly dull and almost irritating sound collage "Voices Of Old People," nothing more than some badly edited-together snippets of sound bites from the residents of old people's homes. Conceived as being a thematic development of Simon's idea to compose a song cycle around the concept of ageing, starting with songs about youth and culminating in songs about old age. Sadly, it's a piece of totally unnecessary filler (despite being one of Fearchar's favourite pieces on the album), and does little to really develop the theme beyond Simon's already powerful and insightful compositions.

The song cycle takes up the first half of the album, and starts off with a brief excerpt from the pretty acoustic "Bookends Theme," before thundering into the blaring electronic opening of "Save The Life Of My Child." This song is honestly one of the most bizarre things the duo has ever recorded - it's not that weird in the grand scheme of things, but from the duo who made their name with simple, acoustic folk songs and with their artsy college student vibe, something so reliant on snippets of found sounds and the noisy, discordant blaring of synthesisers is truly unexpected. The song itself buried in the midst of the cacophony is a great one, with its characteristically catchy, sing-along chorus at odds with the noisy experimentation going on around it. "America" is a song I was only familiar with courtesy of Yes's 10-minute, prog-rock extravaganza cover from 1971. The concept of Yes covering Simon & Garfunkel has always amused me, but only when comparing the two versions directly to each other does the ludicrousness of that cover really become clear - stringing out 10 minutes of prog laden with guitar and keyboard solos from this simple acoustic number is one of the band's most highly comical achievements, but the original itself is a really pretty song.

"Old Friends" is close to being the runaway best song on the album. Its desperately sad, lush string arrangement renders Simon's meditations on old age both heart-stirringly touching and poignantly bittersweet, and it segues, almost dissolves, into the full version of the "Bookends Theme," another beautiful acoustic number that rounds off Simon's miniature song-cycle. The second side, consisting mainly of out takes from The Graduate soundtrack, is far more oriented around a more upbeat folk rock style in contrast to the acoustic folk of the song cycle. By far the standout on this side, and probably the best song on the album too, all things considered, is the re-recording of "Mrs Robinson," blessed with the catchiest and most hummable chorus of any Simon & Garfunkel song, and also possessing that iconic "Dee-dee-dee-dee" opening refrain that's become so iconic and immediately recognisable. There's other great stuff on show, though - "Punky's Dilemma" is a fun and bizarre little number that's playfully childlike ("I wish I was a Kellogg's corn flake, floating in my bowl,") and "A Hazy Shade Of Winter" sees the two of them taking the "rock" side of folk rock perhaps as far as they ever would. Built on a pounding, insistent rhythm and a spidery guitar riff, it's highly reminiscent of some of the more urgent rock tracks from Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow, and has an almost psychedelic-rock flavour about it.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Paul Simon except where noted.

1. Bookends Theme

2. Save The Life Of My Child

3. America

4. Overs

5. Voices Of Old People (Paul Simon & Art Garfunkel)

6. Old Friends

7. Bookends Theme

8. Fakin' It

9. Punky's Dilemma

10. Mrs Robinson

11. A Hazy Shade Of Winter

12. At The Zoo

Genesis - Trespass

Released - October 1970

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - John Anthony

Selected Personnel - Peter Gabriel (Vocals/Flute/Accordion/Percussion); Tony Banks (Organ/Piano/Mellotron/Guitar); Anthony Phillips (Guitar); Mike Rutherford (Bass/Cello); John Mayhew (Drums/Percussion)

Standout Track - The Knife

Another quick jaunt outside of chronology to pop back to late 1970, inspired this time by my long-gestating decision to give Genesis more of a go. As I've mentioned elsewhere, their 1971 album Nursery Cryme (the first to feature the classic line-up of Gabriel, Banks, Rutherford, Hackett and Collins) is one I've always struggled to really enjoy, though the albums that followed it are ones that have gradually really grown in my estimation over the last few years. I therefore always assumed that anything pre-Nursery Cryme would be equally disappointing and would simply showcase a band struggling to find their sound and identity. Eventually, I bit the bullet and decided to at least give Trespass a try, and found myself pleasantly surprised by it. One of its songs (the brilliant mini-epic "The Knife") is genuinely one of the band's best songs, while the rest of it consists of material that might not amaze or surprise anybody already familiar with the band's more well-known material, but is still enormously compelling and interesting. I wish, really, that I had heard it sooner before becoming familiar with the likes of Selling England By The Pound. Coming to it after almost every other Gabriel-era Genesis album, it's easy to dismiss some bits with "Ah, they're falling back on the same old tricks here," before suddenly remembering that at this point the band were really breaking new ground for themselves and discovering new tricks.

Genesis' debut album in 1969, From Genesis To Revelation, had consisted of shorter, baroque pop-styled songs markedly unlike the music they would go on to be known for, and Trespass shows them indulging in the prog rock traditions of the era for the first time, turning their talents to grand, lengthy pieces, complex instrumental passages and all the grandiose bombast typical of prog. I've read that Trespass is, in many ways, the nearest thing there is to being the one specific album that Jethro Tull's marvellous prog piss-take Thick As A Brick was making fun of, though that seems a slightly unfair legacy to give it. Certainly, it's laden with all the heavy-handed pomp of prog rock excess, and there are echoes of its bombastic organ solos in certain passages of Thick As A Brick, but despite all its excesses, Trespass is able to back itself up with genuinely great material. Nursery Cryme seems to me an album far more ripe for mockery, considering it has all the heavy-handedness and bombast of this album, but with far fewer decent musical ideas to recommend itself. Essentially, anybody who gets tired of long-winded prog rock meandering or theatricality will probably find little to enjoy about Trespass, while those, like me, who love the musical journeys this kind of music is able to take a listener on, will find a lot to enjoy.

One of the most interesting things to note, as a Genesis fan already familiar with their work, is how strikingly similar the guitar style of Anthony Phillips is to that of his successor, Steve Hackett. If I hadn't known this album was recorded by a different lineup, I probably wouldn't have had much cause to notice. Clearly, in looking for a replacement for Phillips, the band were keen to find somebody who would gel seamlessly into their newly-established sound rather than requiring them to reinvent it slightly. Peter Gabriel's vocals also sound far more assured than on some of the other Genesis albums - I've always felt that, with his debut solo album Peter Gabriel (I - Car) in 1977, he suddenly acquitted himself as a singer of real power and depth and assurance, while on some of the earlier Genesis albums he sounds reedier and shakier, a style admittedly in keeping with the more loose-limbed and colourful nature of Genesis's music. But in several places on Genesis, Gabriel demonstrates some real vocal power, most notably in the closing moments of "Stagnation" and the declamatory passages of "Looking For Someone" and "The Knife." There's also far more use of Gabriel's flute here than on any other Genesis album, and in places he really demonstrates some genuine talent with the instrument - while most of the other Genesis music I've heard involves his flute playing in simple, purely melodic passages, there are some genuinely acrobatic and impressive moments on show here. He's no Thijs Van Leer or Ian Anderson, but he's no novice either.

Given that I've only been listening to this album for the past two weeks or so, it's difficult for me to go into the nature of the songs in too much detail - if one major complaint could be made of it, it's that some of the longer tracks (like "Looking For Someone," "White Mountain" and "Stagnation,") while all definitely great and highly enjoyable, don't have much to really distinguish themelves, but follow the same general pattern of a lengthy piece progressing through slow, portentous passages and high-energy sections of bombastic organ and guitar playing off each other. The "I need a drink" section of "Stagnation," emerging dramatically from a slower, more thoughtful passage, is one of the most memorable and effective moments. None of them really has a weak point about them, and they're all tremendous fun, but it is the kind of music that probably takes a while to really get under your skin so that every nuance of each song becomes clear, and they admittedly do little to really stand apart from a lot of other Genesis material. The album's two slight misfires are the two songs that abandon the colourful energy that really stands out in those three songs. "Visions Of Angels" is a lengthy, meandering thing that picks up pace in a few places but largely follows a melody too insipid to really enjoy, while "Dusk" is a forgettable pastoral acoustic folk song that thankfully doesn't last too long.

Two fairly uninspired songs and three more that are really enjoyable but slightly indistinguishable does not a great album make, of course, which is why the inclusion of album closer "The Knife" really shoots Trespass into the big leagues. While it's recognisably Genesis, it also manages to be pretty much completely different from nearly everything else of theirs I've heard. There are parts of "Supper's Ready" and "The Battle Of Epping Forest" that come close to the sheer dangerous energy of "The Knife," but they don't really match it. While it's driven by Tony Banks's gloriously insistent and urgent organ riff, it also feels more heavily reliant on guitar than any other Genesis song I can think of - there are some blaring snarls that Phillips lets loose in places, and a thrilling solo in the early section that are almost shocking to a listener familiar with Genesis's keyboard-centric sound. The middle section, that slowly builds in intensity via Gabriel's flute and a chorus of chanting voices (culminating in the command "OK, men, fire over their heads,") before ushering another angry guitar solo, is among the most exciting moments in the band's discography. I'll be honest, this album could consist of five songs of absolute tawdry rubbish and "The Knife" and I would still consider including it on this list. It's that good a song.

Considering the brilliance of that song, and the high quality of most of the other material on offer here, it's a surprise to me that I dislike Nursery Cryme as much as I do. Perhaps I need to give it further listens having got more into Genesis, but I've listened to it many times in the past and have always found little to enjoy about it. It seems odd that the band could go from something as fresh and vital-sounding as this to something I consider so tedious and unimaginative. Perhaps one day Nursery Cryme shall appear on this blog with an embarrassed apology from me, but for now, the next step was the gloriously colourful and theatrical Foxtrot in 1972, before their true masterpiece Selling England By The Pound the year after. If either of those albums appeal, then it's definitely worth giving Trespass a listen - this is a band that are slowly revealing themselves as more worthy of my time than I initially thought. I even listened to Invisible Touch this week and didn't find it half as repulsive as I assumed I would...

Track Listing:

All songs written by Tony Banks, Peter Gabriel, Anthony Phillips and Mike Rutherford.

1. Looking For Someone

2. White Mountain

3. Visions Of Angels

4. Stagnation

5. Dusk

6. The Knife

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

Released - May 1973

Genre - Progressive Rock

Producer - Tom Newman, Simon Heyworth & Mike Oldfield

Selected Personnel - Mike Oldfield (Guitar/Bass/Organ/Piano/Mandolin/Percussion/Vocals/Tubular Bells); Steve Broughton (Percussion); Lindsay L. Cooper (Bass); Jon Field (Flutes); Sally Oldfield (Vocals); Vivian Stanshall (Master of Ceremonies)

Standout Track - Tubular Bells (Part I)

It's literally just now, as I sat down to do a bit of background reading on Tubular Bells to refresh my memory of it before writing this review, that I find to my astonishment that Mike Oldfield was only nineteen when it was recorded. To be frank, I'm stunned. Music is full of astonishingly talented young prodigies, and their talent is always delightful and surprising, but that something like Tubular Bells could be produced by someone so young is nothing short of ridiculous - it's an epic piece that demonstrates not only prodigious talent, but is also so ambitiously epic and meticulously complex that it betrays not just talent but absolute genius. Of course, like most people, I first encountered the piece due to its opening piano melody being used as the theme for William Friedkin's 1973 film The Exorcist (a film I was familiar with far younger than I should have been) and for many years thought of it as nothing other than "The Exorcist Theme Tune." It was in a music class in perhaps about 2004, when I would have been about fifteen, that we spent a class studying it as a significant piece of modern music, and I was surprised to even learn that it existed outside of the film itself, and was even more surprised to learn that fifty-minute pieces of music existed (remember, this was a good few years before my interest in prog started). As an Elton John-obsessed teenager, the idea of a ludicrously complex fifty-minute instrumental did little to excite me, and it was only at uni, after watching a documentary on the history of prog rock in Britain that placed considerable emphasis on Tubular Bells that I decided it was time to listen to it properly.

To be honest, a big part of me still has trouble truly labelling Oldfield's work as pure prog - yes, it has the epic grandiosity of prog, but there's none of the vast, sprawling solos or prog's sense of jazzy loose-limbed wandering here. On the contrary, everything feels meticulously planned, with every note occurring with such precision and accuracy that it feels far more like some vast orchestral, New Age suite than some prog epic. As the years went by Oldfield's work would continue bending the rules of such labels by becoming increasingly folkloric and pastoral while still exploring side-long epic formats, and moving further away from the traditions of "rock" music. Such precision is to be expected, of course, considering the key element that made Tubular Bells so radically different to pretty much all other music being made at the time - the fact that pretty much every instrument, with a few minor exceptions, was played by Oldfield himself. There was no room for jazzy solos or instrumental jams when each performance had to be recorded separately and layered on top of one another - Oldfield was not just performer but also sculptor, carefully trying to work out how to construct this mammoth piece of music from isolated fragments of his own instrumental performances. (Once again, the thought that a nineteen-year-old would be able to be such a talented multi-instrumentalist is mind-boggling).

Although the album marked his solo debut, Oldfield was no stranger to the music industry at this time and had played in various folk and rock bands before trying to put more focus on his own solo work. As young as fifteen he had already been composing fifteen-minute instrumentals on the guitar, so the scope and range of music like Tubular Bells was obviously something that came fairly naturally to him. By 1972, he had started tentatively writing and recording sections of what would eventually become his landmark album, and started trying to earn the interest of record labels. Despite the popularity of prog rock at the time, most of these record labels were reluctant to back the project, believing it was too anti-commercial, until a small new label called Virgin Records, headed by a certain Richard Branson and based at the Manor Studios, saw promise in it and funded a full recording session. Oldfield's role in the history of Virgin would come to be key, being their flagship artist for the launch of their new record label, and therefore partly helping to contribute to the ongoing success of the Virgin empire in the future.

Quite why Oldfield felt he had to have such control over the recording process and play every instrument himself isn't clear - of course, if one is able to play everything well without recourse to session musicians, then why not, but at the time the notion of a piece so vast and complicated being performed almost entirely by one person was almost unheard-of. At the time, Oldfield was painfully shy and suffered from extensive social anxiety, and it might simply be that he had no faith in the idea of being able to communicate his musical and creative ideas to session musicians and so decided to maintain absolute control over the recording and the performances himself, knowing he knew how to deliver the sounds he wanted, regardless of how much work this would be making for himself in trying to edit the whole thing together.

The end result is quite simply astonishing - that sense of precision and meticulous care taken over everything means that over a fifty-minute running time it manages to avoid ever hitting on a musical idea that struggles to hold the listener's rapt attention. It moves along at a stately pace, slowly developing one motif into another. That stateliness and sense of care also means it occasionally suffers from a lack of real passion or energy (with the notable exception of the "Piltdown Man" section of Part II) - it feels, in places, slightly cold and detached, but then it's a sense of cool detachment that suits the grandeur and majesty of the music itself. The other thing that occasionally counts against it is that feels slightly less coherent and cohesive than some of Oldfield's later work - while motifs are gradually developed over several minutes, there is the odd moment where one idea is suddenly completely abandoned and a new thought takes over, while almost nothing in Part II really relates musically to anything on the record's first side. This isn't a huge problem in itself - it gives the sense that we're listening to a vast and sprawling suite that moves through multiple moods and ideas and thoughts, but it's a shame there feels like there is no solid musical backbone to the piece that informs it and lends it its identity. These issues are ones that Oldfield would be able to hone in later work, but what he really achieves here is that incredible sense of versatility and range and ambition, even if it doesn't quite hang together as a coherent work.

The first half or so of Part I is largely built on a single motif, namely the iconic piano tune that Friedkin used for The Exorcist - it's a chillingly simple, cold and clear tune that's echoed on other keyboards and acoustic guitar, with the occasional staccato chiming of an organ in the early minutes puncturing its icy ambience. Over ten minutes or so, this theme is played with in a variety of moods and tempos, even incorporating a brutal rock guitar moment, before the tempo drops halfway through and, over electronic bleeping, a mysterious electric guitar line takes over with a new tune. Shortly after is an all-too-brief moment that's always been one of my favourite parts of the whole suite - the bright, churning piano motif that's played over the contented humming of what sounds like a vast male voice choir, but is probably just Oldfield's own voice overdubbing itself again and again. The final minutes of Part I involve the same repeated motif played by a whole host of instruments, introduced one by one by Master of Ceremonies Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (who were due to start recording at the Manor Studios as soon as Oldfield had completed his own sessions). Supposedly, the album's now iconic title was chosen in response to the dramatic reading Stanshall gave to his final line, "Plus tubular bells!"

Part II, as I mentioned, bears little to no musical relation to Part I and starts again with a slowly developed theme, a pleasant, almost pastoral acoustic guitar melody that's then explored on piano and keyboards too before a meditative organ part takes over. Over the course of Part II, Oldfield seems to take more time to experiment with distortion and to change the sounds of the instrument he uses, incorporating things like the "Bagpipe Guitars," an electric guitar that he had applied a certain effect to in order to make it sound more like a bagpipe. Perhaps the standout moment of Part II is similarly founded in distortion effects, in the form of the "Piltdown Man" section. Allegedly, Branson had demanded that there be a part of the album to feature vocals so it could be released as a single. Frustrated at having to compromise his artistic vision, Oldfield got drunk on whisky and proceeded to scream and wail into a microphone while recording onto a tape playing at double speed, so that when played back at normal speed, his ranting became unintelligible nonsense. Whether or not the story behind it is true, this section of nonsensical shouting and aggression, over perhaps the album's only moment of noticeable percussion, is bizarre but demonstrates the album's energetic highpoint. As further evidence of Oldfield's ever-so-slightly tongue-in-cheek sense of humour, the entire mammoth piece is rounded off by a rendition of "The Sailor's Hornpipe," that rapidly gains pace until it spirals off into silence.

Ultimately, then, it's a piece with a decent sense of silliness and fun to counteract its own stately grandeur, and, while it doesn't quite hang together as a coherent suite, it's a wildly impressive testament to the talent of an obviously gifted young man. His later work would manage to achieve more sense of cohesive identity across its entire length, but the buying public at the time weren't put off by the few flaws Tubular Bells exhibited - in the wake of its being used in The Exorcist, the album became wildly popular and put both Oldfield and Virgin Records on the map. In later years, a heart-warmingly sweet Oldfield would reflect on how the album's incredible success affected him mentally. As mentioned, he was a deeply shy and anxious man who made music not out of a desire for fame and success (the outrageously ambitious nature of his music is obvious enough proof of that) but out of a love of music itself. He therefore recalled feeling immensely pressured by the album's success and the subsequent entreaties to tour and to give interviews, and responded by going off to live in the remote countryside for a few months, hoping everybody would just go away and leave him alone and let him continue making music. While the public and the press weren't too keen on leaving him alone, they were all too happy to let him make more music, and as the years went by and Oldfield's confidence issues gradually resolved themselves, he was also able to tackle head-on the issues that held back Tubular Bells from being quite as phenomenal as it could have been. Despite its obvious brilliance, Tubular Bells has never been my favourite Oldfield album, and in the following years the world would get a look at what further brilliance this bizarre young prodigy would be able to achieve as he honed his craft, even if none of it would ever generate quite the phenomenal response that this early classic was given.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Mike Oldfield, except where noted.

1. Tubular Bells (Part I)

2. Tubular Bells (Part II) (Incorporates "The Sailor's Hornpipe" - Traditional, arranged by Mike Oldfield)