ARTHUR BROWN: STRANGELANDS (1969; 1988)
1) The Country; 2) The City;
3) The Cosmos; 4) The Cosmos (cont.); 5) Endless Sleep.
There are quite a few «from-the-vaults»
releases from different stages of Arthur Brown's long and diverse career,
judging by the discographies. Most of these, however, are quite hard to get,
some have only semi-official or bootleg status, and, most importantly, it is
not exactly clear if any of them are worth hunting down for anything other than
historical purposes.
I have managed to locate one of them — Strangelands, recorded in late 1969 and
originally supposed to be the second official LP by The Crazy World of Arthur
Brown, although this world was crazy in a different way already: Vince Crane
was out of the band, and the songwriting was dominated by Brown and his
drummer pal Drachen Theaker, even more advanced in the ways of progressive
avantgarde than Arthur. Different, but not any less crazy: how could an album recorded at the Jabberwocky Studios
in the merry land of Puddletown be anything less than competely and utterly
bonkers?
It seems hard to deny the decisive influence
that Trout Mask Replica must have
had on this record, next to which The
Crazy World Of Arthur Brown sounds like a bunch of innocent teen-pop
singles. No more verses, choruses, hooks, or anything targeted at instantaneous
memorability and seduction. Instead, we have several lengthy, multi-part
suites, performed in semi-improvisatory style over a mesh of blues-rock and
jazz-rock patterns that occasionally descend into free-form chaos. Whee!
How is this different from early Kingdom Come?
Well, much of the musical philosophy is the same (and a few of the melodies and
vocal passages actually made their way over to Galactic Zoo Dossier, eventually). But compared to this, even
Kingdom Come was more «commercial» — the sound was tighter and tougher, the
riffs were better fleshed out, and there were sometimes even perfectly «normal»
tracks like ʽSunriseʼ. Strangelands
has no masterplan, other than some vague, constantly fluctuating ideas on how
to fuck your brains in the most effective way. Or, put it differently, in the
most boring way?
The reason why this second album never even
found a proper distributor is that it never had any real meaning. Trout Mask Replica, at the very least,
was a diligently planned, carefully crafted experiment in creating a new face
for music. It took lots of inspiration from progressive jazz masters and
transplanted it into a pop / blues-rock setting with the utmost care. This here
stuff, however, has fairly little to add to what was already quite normal ever
since Frank Zappa's Absolutely Free
came out in 1967, except for Brown's «now I'm Dr. Evil, and now I'm the little
goat in your backyard, and now I'm actually being serious but you won't be able
to tell anyway» routine that gets annoying in about five minutes.
Decidedly, this is one of the most «far out»
recordings of 1969, but individually, every single ingredient here will be
done better by either Pink Floyd, Can, Captain Beefheart, or Amon Düül II, and collectively they do not amount to a
singular vision — the whole thing is very much transitional, before the whole
plan became realized in a slightly more accessible and coherent way on Galactic Zoo Dossier. Recommended only
for completists and serious historiographers of weird brain cell movements; thumbs down
otherwise. PS: Apparently, there is something called Jam, credited to Kingdom Come this time, another archival release
that is also mostly bent on improvisational ravings and stuff. There is an
infinitesimally small chance that it will ever manage to cross your path unless
you make it your destiny, but beware all the same.
Heh, so now I know where Keane got the idea for their latest album title from.
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