ARTHUR BROWN: JOURNEY (1973)
1) Time Captives; 2) Triangles;
3) Gypsy; 4) Superficial Roadblocks; 5) Conception; 6) Beginning Of
"Spirit Of Joy"; 7) Spirit Of Joy; 8) Come Alive.
Kingdom Come's last album was its oddest one,
and for that, is a particular favorite among the select few who have chosen to
receive their daily dose of truth and light from the likes of Arthur Brown. And
I do have to say that, out of all of Arthur's output, Journey is perhaps that one record indeed that might work better out of context than within it. I can imagine people who are not too familiar with Mr.
Brown enjoy it more than those who already know him well.
To begin with, Journey is often named as the first album ever to rely exclusively
on drum machines in the percussion department. If this is true, it was one of
those «accidents», like the several independent inventions of hard rock
through defective amps that are well documented in history — here, the
«accident» was somewhat more trivial in that Kingdom Come, at a certain point,
were simply left without a regular drummer, and instead of bothering with
session musicians, Arthur and keyboard player Victor Peraino decided to handle
all the percussion duties themselves with the aid of the «Bentley Rhythm Ace»,
an early invention from what would go on to become the Roland Corporation.
On the other hand, all the «pssht-pssht»
percussion noises here do match the album's atmosphere, which is very different both from the crazy
megalomaniac R&B of Zoo Dossier
and the comic overtones of Kingdom Come.
For some reason, guitarist Andy Dalby retreats into the background and lets
Peraino completely dominate the proceedings with the newest wonders of technology:
although old-time organs and Mellotrons still occasionally break through the
walls, most of the sounds are produced electronically.
In a way, that makes Journey almost stupendously ahead of its time — an ice cold,
shivery celebration of the robo-digital ideology in pop music that not even
Kraftwerk were fully capable of at the time, let alone all the New Wave and
synth-pop artists of the times to come. With one exception: it does not really
look like there was any conscious effort here to break genre boundaries.
Melodically and «ideologically», Journey
does not constitute any significant departure from the old style of Kingdom
Come. It just so happened that the melodies and ideologies had to be delivered
through drum machines and synthesizers rather than actual drums and guitars. It
could have easily happened otherwise. Is it a good or a bad thing that it
didn't?
Hard for me to decide. Journey seems to take itself quite seriously, and, as I already
said, it is easier to agree with that seriousness for people who have it as
their first Arthur Brown experience rather than those who have followed him
from the burning helmet days. There is a «global» theme present here — the
artist is breaking away from the problem chains of mankind and zooming into
open space, a subject for which electronic sounds are, of course, most
appropriate, what with their connection to elementary particles of matter and
all. But despite the appropriate sounds and the overall coldness, darkness, and
«distant» nature of the music, its ability to carry you, the listener, away with it is somewhat questionable (of
course, by «you» I mean «me», but who else could I put in the listener's seat?
my cat is not much of a pop music fan).
In a small part this is because, having
inadvertently fallen upon a New Sound, Arthur was so heavily seduced by it
that he abused it on more than one occasion. ʽTime Captivesʼ, for instance, begins
with almost an entire minute of nothing
but rhythmic electronic percussion counting out time — yes, it ties in with the
song's message, but maybe if so much of our time wasn't wasted by listening to
an electronic metronome, we could be somewhat less captivated by time? Four of
seven songs go over seven minutes without presenting enough melodic content for
three — in honest hope of setting your mind under the hypnotic power of the
instruments, yet there is nowhere near the care here that, for instance, Pink
Floyd would invest into their lengthy atmospheric numbers, meticulously, almost
pedantically, alternating build-ups and come-downs. It is true that Journey sounds more calculated than its
predecessors, with fewer of those spontaneous, sometimes irritating
wannabe-Zappa cuts-off and musical non-sequiturs, but it is still an Arthur
Brown album, and that means it might be jumping off the pier any time now.
I would also like to add that, contrary to
certain reviewers who dared to praise
the use of the drum machine here, I personally find it quite dated. In 1973,
these sounds were, first and foremost, weird and otherworldly; today, they are
silly and wimpy compared to what the subsequent evolution of electronic
percussion has led us to. Likewise, some large chunks on ʽTime Captivesʼ,
ʽGypsyʼ, etc., seem more intent on telling us «look at the real cool tone this box of knobs and cords can produce!» than on
creating a cosmic mood based on suggestions that the cosmos itself is
whispering into the musician's ear. If you know what I'm talking about, that
is.
But none of this is to say that Journey is worthless — aside from being
a genuinely unique album for 1973, a totally out-of-bounds progressive
experience for a year already rife with prog watermarks, it does have its share
of memorable and inspiring moments. In its second part, ʽGypsyʼ gains in fury
and becomes an unstoppable cosmic rocker (the second song titled ʽGypsyʼ to use
the title as a metaphor for space travel — after the Moody Blues). The wild
screams, issuing out of the bass-heavy musical jungle of ʽConceptionʼ, still have
an ability to shock. And ʽSpirit Of Joyʼ, despite only being three minutes of
length, is an excellent attempt at fitting a happy R&B anthem within this
tale of frightening cosmic darkness. Perhaps it should have been chosen as the
album conclusion, instead of the overlong blues-rocker ʽCome Aliveʼ (where
Dalby finally gets to come out with some blazing guitar work, but not for too
long).
Altogether, Journey, like every other Kingdom Come album, is not a record that
I would «trust» — and by «trust» I ultimately mean «enjoy», since it is fairly
hard to honestly enjoy an album that one does not trust — but it has enough of
puzzles in its sleeve, even coming off its already puzzling two predecessors,
to still warrant a thumbs up. On my own cosmic journeys, I prefer to
be taken by guys like Hawkwind and their B-movie visions of such things; but if
a little bit of musical metaphysics conducted by a drum machine is right up
your alley, give it a try by all means. After all, it's never been
scientifically proven that Arthur Brown is not
the ultimate source of knowledge on the universe.
Check "Journey" (CD) on Amazon
I got my copy of this on vinyl and I actually thought the record was skipping at first cus that electro percussion at the beginning goes on for so long. While I agree that the drum machine sounds dated, I still wouldn't want the album without it. It just helps the album sound more unique.
ReplyDeleteI also like my copy in particular because it's got a hilarious alternate album cover featuring a naked bearded wizard guy who seems to hold mastery over the cosmos surrounded by stars.
pssht-pssht! pssht-pssht!
ReplyDeleteThe Hawkwind connections can't be a coincidence; the two acts were sharing the same bills together as early as 1971.
ReplyDelete