Bull In A Ming Vase Indeed

I'd listened to most of Roy Harper's albums throughout my later teens and early twenties but only really loved HQ because it was full of rock band instrumentation and left the simple guitar and voice on just a few tracks. Ya see, I really, really hated singer songwriters at that stage of my life, even one as out of place and individual as Harper.

Then, just recently, I read a good review of the '74 comp of early material "Flashes from the Archives of Oblivion" and thought I'd give it a go. Ofcourse, I found out I loved the damned thing from start to finish and so acquired all his releases. Not all of them are great but every single one contains many, many fine songs. I think I like them so much because of the combination of the high sweet voice with such off centre melodies. And he's not maudlin - there are many moments when his quirky humour takes over.

Here's a few good ones:

mp3: Don't You Grieve
mp3: Forget Me Not
mp3: One Of Those Days In England
mp3: One Man Rock and Roll Band
mp3: South Africa

You can buy all his albums + lots of BBC material (he was a perennial Peel favourite) at his own web site.

I'm slowly but surely starting to record music again even if I've had some problems this past year with my spare-room studio and my inability to get a true handle on the technology. But the results are OK at least.

mp3: Dusty 12 Drone (beware - 12mb)

This is cracked drone, split chanell spittle, weird chord, 3 note bass and kick all done with slightly twinged presets on the Alesis Ion - a very nice synth indeed.

Babs

Just a short note...

Apparently synth-pop hasn't died just yet. And that's a good thing.

Especially when the songs have memorable, hummable melodies; gorgeous chord changes; bleepy bloopy synths; rhythms that make me want to dance all robotic and lyrics I don't understand:

mp3: Barbara Morgenstern - The Operator

This is from her soon to be released album "The Grass Is Greener". I can say no more other than it's fantastic.

Her web site has streams of all her work + a couple of mp3 dloads as well.