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Speaker 2Jazz, Tim, a phenomenal year for maybe the peak. We probably said that in 1917, 1971, 1976. Maybe the peak for electric jazz. Because I'm looking at this list now, miles on the corner. Herbie Hancock's Muandishi's Crossings, Return to Forever's first album, Les McCann's Invitation to Openness, Santana's Caravanserai, Weather Report, I Sing the Body Electric, Frank Zappa, What's Your Name, Wacka-Jawacka, Grand Mizzou. Interesting here, we've got bands that we're putting in the same category, some of which clearly have come from the tradition of pop and rock, Santana and Zappa, and some of which have clearly come from the tradition of traditional jazz. Miles, Herbie, Chick Corea. Interesting, they've kind of arrived at this similar point, isn't it? Because when you listen to Santana's Caravanserai, I'm struggling to say it, you can hear the difference between that and, say, what Miles Davis had done. I mean, obviously, they both have a very strong personality of their own, but it's become very close, isn't it? Is this the closest that jazz and rock ever came, historically?
Speaker 3I think in Britain, historically, you did have things like, let's say, Nucleus, Soft Machine, King Crimson. There was that sort of British jazz fusion, and the rock bands like Crimson and Soft Machine embracing jazz. And Brian Auger, you know, I think he embraced jazz. So you did have times where they might be on the same marquee bill. It could be Keith Tippett and King Crimson. I'm inventing this, but you know what I'm saying? No one would have been surprised. But yeah, there's definitely a point here where this coalesces, where it's really difficult to tell the artists that have come from rock and the artists that come from jazz apart. Although I do think Miles, I mean, On the Corner is probably my favourite of these.
Speaker 2Well, that's, yes, I mean, that. On the Corner is something of its own because it's, Miles has introduced something new to his sound this year, which actually, as you're kind of saying, does set it apart. Yeah. I think Caravanserai sounds more like what Miles would have been doing on In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew. But in fact, he's moved on, hasn't he? We've got a listener review of On the Corner, I think, haven't we, Rob? Let's have a listen to the listener review of On the Corner.
Speaker 4Hello, my name is Tam from Belgium. My choice was this complicated for 1972 would be the absolutely freakadelic experience of Miles Davis' On the Corner, which could receive a distinction for one of the most bonkers fusion albums, basically taking the template of Bitches Brew while stretching its abstract Afrofuturistic paintings to an almost breaking point. Of course, it's the one where all the usual suspects conspire to create a Stockhausen-inspired telluric, mind-bending, but also fascinating swamp of cut-up avant-func.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's interesting. The listener there highlighted the Stockhausen influence because Miles was very much enthralled to Stockhausen at the time. And also Paul Buckmaster, the arranger, was introducing him to a lot of very experimental Western 20th century classical music. It's Bitches Brew, but it's sicker, isn't it? It's got more distortion. It's got more dissonance. It's got more funk. It's dark. It's twisted. It's lo-fi. I mean, everything on this album is distorted into the red, isn't it? And it's repetitive. It's directionless, but it's got a spell and it's got a magic that holds you in its way, hasn't it?
Speaker 3Again, something that kind of fits with Kraut Rock, particularly Cannes and particularly aspects of Noy. It's relentless. And I think avant-funk is a great description, but also battle funk because it slaps you in the face straight off. It's really aggressive music. And I think what is interesting here, it's a bit like Bowie and Eno. Bowie and Eno, in a way, they partly paved the way for punk. By the time punk happens, Eno's doing Ambient One. Bowie's away with kind of already inventing post-punk. You know, they've already left it behind. At this stage, Miles has left in a silent way. He's left Bitches Brew. And in the wake of that, you've got Return to Forever. You've got Weather Report, Muandishi, that are clearly following that template. Miles has left it completely. He's in another world.
Speaker 2This is the antithesis of slick, isn't it? This is not slick. The ones you mentioned. The ones you mentioned before and increasingly became. I mean, I love the Weather Report album from this year. I love the Return to Forever album. But there is a sense that as the 70s progressed, these bands became more and more slick. Whereas Miles is, as you say, is going into more dissonance, less slick. It's fascinating to hear musicians as well, isn't it, that are clearly able to shred with the best of them. And I think that's what's so fascinating about this album. It's that they're being forced, quote unquote, to play this ugly dissonant funk music. There's almost a sense that they're being made to make this music under duress. You know what I mean? I almost hear that. They don't quite understand what Miles is asking them to do, but they're doing it anyway.
Speaker 3Do you sense that too? Yeah. And it's constantly, as you say, it's pushing the red. And I love the relentlessness of the rhythms. And you get that to an extent on I Sing the Body Electric Weather Report, which is slightly cloudy, a slightly more pastoral. There's also a guest spot from Ralph Tanner on that. But the second side, the Live in Tokyo side, where I think it's Eric Gravatt, the drummer, he is real powerhouse. And this is pushed even further than Eric Gravatt on Live in Tokyo.
Speaker 2And also the repetition and funk. Relentlessness. And the
Speaker 3one thing I think is the biggest lie. You know, I said about the biggest lie about prog rock is people say, oh, you know, there was no humor or there were no roots influences. And you can dismiss that crassness. You can dismiss that crassness. I think that's the biggest lie about prog rock is people say, oh, you know, there was no humor or there were no roots influences.
Speaker 2the echoing trumpet i'm a sucker for it and the concept the voice over here yeah the kind of voice over talking about the signs of the zodiac scorpio you are strong you are attracted to aries virgo yeah it's i just i'm just such a sucker
Speaker 3both brilliant and tacky i think i mean the thing is it is good it's like great it's very 1972 early 70s soundtrack music but yes it almost has that kind of collision with sexploitation and blaxploitation films as well yeah i love it for
Speaker 2that for that i'd absolutely adore it a very british strain of miles informed music ian carl's belladonna not really the name of nucleus but a nucleus album by there's something without wishing to sound like a contradiction in terms when you listen to nucleus and ian carl it's very clear the the massive massive influence of american music isn't it miles davis and yet the music is so powerful and so powerful that it's so powerful that it's so powerful that it's so there's something also about it that's very british and i don't quite know what that is i
Speaker 3totally agree with you and it's one of those things i've questioned as well that when you listen to say soft soft machine of this period um mike westbrook of this period ian car of this period it's very british not even european it's very british there's something quite woody about the sound of this music and there's something in the melodies and i can hear that he's influenced by miles and what i like about ian car is that he never loses sight of the origins of the music because when he's pushing at his most jazz rock fusion experimental with nucleus he'll throw in some licks from louis armstrong in the 20s he's got a real knowledge of the genre um but i agree with you there's something in the phrasing perhaps it's slightly more polite i don't know there's
Speaker 2one thing i think which is in the british jazz which is that it's a bit more polite and it's a bit more isn't in a lot of the american jazz which is the use of time signatures and repressive ostinatos in unusual time i say that i'm immediately thinking of dave brubeck now but anyway but generally speaking you don't hear a lot of that in america a lot of the british jazz did it a lot zapper did it yeah yeah yeah well let's talk about zapper two of my favorite zapper albums from this year whack-a-joo whack-a-mole this is the peak of his jazz influenced music i think um and in the early 20s and early 30s i think it was in the early 20s i think it was in the early 20s and he was in a wheelchair yeah and reinvented himself with these records which are very much in the tradition of jazz rock and yet are very distinctively and very recognizably also zapper records yes not just because of the occasional vocals and the vocals are very occasional these records they are predominantly instrumental records but there's something here you recognize the tradition from early pieces like king kong a lot of improvisation a lot of very interesting head arrangements the chord voicings are very zapper-esque some interesting use of bizarre um speeding up slowing down sounds using the studio to process the sounds which are very zapper-esque too and i think these two might be certainly in my top five zapper albums these would both be in yeah i mean great
Speaker 3horn charts as well great trombone and trumpet playing on both of them yeah because the trombone at this stage was not common solo instrument in rock music true um i mean it is zapper in the sense i think waka jo waka is the closest you get to pure fusion but even that has the very tricksy typically zapper intro before
Speaker 2it's worth noting that that album is subtitled hot rats too so yeah it does feel like a continuation of but even more i think even more with the brass arrangements it takes even more into the realms of
Speaker 3yeah yeah oh it totally fits with i mean you know when you have this category it fits with what's happening in the worlds of jazz sonically um as well as stylistically um i prefer grand wazoo i think grand wazoo is slightly more compositional if you like it's not quite head arrangement and improv as much as waka jo waka waka jo waka especially the very long piece that you know opens the the album and you've got two very short songs i think you're thinking of big swifty
Speaker 2big swifty is the track that is the track takes up the whole side one yeah yeah yeah it's very much an improv yeah yeah
Speaker 3yeah whereas i think that grand wazoo never loses sight of the melody in the arrangement it's a bit more structured and arranged yeah and i prefer grand wazoo because the thing is that he was a great melodist you know he was a great composer and so there were some really strong beautiful themes and grand wazoo is my favorite and a
Speaker 2zapper melody is also is always instantly recognizable yeah
Speaker 3completely whereas i think we're saying a waka jo waka big that immediate arrangement which is saying right this is zapper yeah very tricksy shifting time signatures and melodies and then it goes for him into relatively simple band yeah jam band but jazz rock band yeah jam band territory um but both yeah i agree they're in the top tier zapper for me and you know push comes to shove i'm going for grand wazoo over waka jo waka great one record i
Speaker 2love from this year jazz record i don't think you knew tim but uh maybe you've got a chance to check out les mccann's invitation to openness did you get a chance to check i
Speaker 3did i listened to it once on youtube which i think is the the optimum way of listening to any album with adverts coming in every few minutes
Speaker 2phenomenal record although clearly very very indebted to um again to miles i mean miles really set the template for the next two or three years with bitches brew and in a silent i was going to say in search of space there in a silent way but a beautiful record if you don't know it and you're a fan of bitches brew it's good yeah three long songs three long very long opening very luminous kind of sound the fender rose i mean
Speaker 3maybe more it's somewhere between bitches brewing in a silent way isn't it because it's more accessible than bitches brew but maybe slightly more off the wall than in a silent way but completely up there in terms of oh really but there were lots of you know lots of players around that era making great albums eddie henderson being another one um but this is good and i suppose les mccann was never associated with this sort of music which is why i was surprised to discover yeah more the extreme i mean i i think
Speaker 2it's an exceptional record it's
Speaker 3really good yeah i enjoyed it and the thing is i don't only really known les mccann for his slightly more straightforward 60s work but also for the fact that he had an album called les
Speaker 2is more great title
Speaker 3yeah tim
Speaker 2we got one more category one more category because we need to we need to return yeah to progressive rock because we're going to do progressive rock on the continent okay or progressive rock in continent if you this is a mop-up yeah it's a mop-up of of the rest one of my favorite bands of all time orange debut album this year they became better later on but it's a great first entry in their discography focus three focus fan we talked about focus on the show we've already talked about focus um very distinctive sound didn't yeah no great band i
Speaker 3mean this is a double album that for me suffers for being a double album i mean i really like hamburger hamburger concerto yeah and moving ways i think they're great because this is amazing i think there's enough music on this to make the best focus album
Speaker 2well the second record if i remember right is just a jam isn't
Speaker 3it is it anonymous is anonymous and i find that really wearing it's a bit directionless um it's like why did
Speaker 2they make this a double album
Speaker 3yeah yeah there's some great stuff on it it's got some of the best and i suppose that's it i find this really frustrating because it's it's focused at their best with some of their strongest material it ends with an earlier track house of the king you know we all know from sunday morning political i think that was added because that's on the first hour yeah exactly yeah it's a very odd yeah it's a
Speaker 2very odd thing to do isn't it i think it was probably aimed at the what then was the market the post hocus pocus market that yeah yeah it's great i mean has the king is really good and so
Speaker 3yeah i'm really mixed with them i love it i think it's focused at their best but i really wish they'd have dropped synonymous and the
Speaker 2jamming jan akerman though what a guitar player all of them again but i mean yeah for me jan akerman one of the great perhaps a little bit unsung guitar players you know furious style frenetic furious but capable of incredible moments of lyrical beauty well this is it that
Speaker 3you know they can do lyrical beauty and i suppose that with focus they are in my view when they're at their best their first tier progressive rock they are definite or i believe it's premier league
Speaker 2now so we've got if we just stay in holland for a minute super sister putting on gisterin the closest holland have or the netherlands have beg your pardon to a kind of canterbury-esque sounding band i really like them probably their best record
Speaker 3i think sounds very very canterbury very canterbury that's
Speaker 2very influenced obviously by the by the british canterbury bands
Speaker 3distorted hammonds and kind of quiet richard sinclair lead vocal yeah none more english despite them being dutch well
Speaker 2yes and and a lot of you talked about comedy in progressive rock yeah a lot of humor and comedy and sort of you know undermining their own seriousness then in scandinavia we have the finnish band tasa valen president d with their classic lambert land scandinavian progressive rock is a whole other area which we don't really have time to go into but this is one of the the archetypal records of scandinavian progressive rock which was a very unique sound it sounds very scandinavian at the risk of stating the obvious but it also has this very gentle jazz influence as well r&b influences bo hansen will probably be the most well-known scandinavian sort of progressive cross pekka pohola pekka pohola less so but i think bo
Speaker 3I mean, I think the interesting thing about the Finnish scene in particular is that there was a lot more jazz than is typical for other continental yeah they did like their jazz and they really like their zapper but
Speaker 2that's also true i think scandinavia generally yeah so did you say finland yeah yeah no you're probably right if you listen to swedish progressive rock bands danish progressive rock bands norwegian progressive rock bands there is a strong influence i think from from jazz i mean a lot of jazz musicians ended up living in stockholm making records in stockholm but i
Speaker 3think hot rats was a yeah king kong was covered by so many
Speaker 2tasmanian president he covered king kong right some other progress uh the finnish progress but
Speaker 3that's what's interesting isn't it so that you know germany italy holland and then scandinavia they're developing threads of progressive music that are quite distinct from one another so
Speaker 2keith jarrett famously had his scandinavian quartet as well okay i said earlier i think that there are two progressive rock albums for me this year close to the edge is one of them here's the other one that i would take to my grave aphrodite's child 666 okay is an absolute masterpiece for me absolute masterpiece now we talked about again we come back to this subject time and time again about progressive rock the first wave being a product of nothing but itself in other words musicians just drawing from all these different places to create this new hybrid this is a greek band vangelis is the composer demis rousseau is uh is the singer right who became very famous in the 70s in the uk for being his kind of middle of the road singer but the time was a kick-ass bass player great bass player in a great vocalist he's a first
Speaker 3class vocalist this
Speaker 2album is mad isn't it it's a concept album based on the book of revelation and it takes in everything it takes in everything from traditional greek music to furious maha vishnu like fusion and famously this extraordinary piece of i don't know how you describe it it's almost like something that um luciano beria would have done this kind of performance art with a vocalist this piece called infinity yeah
Speaker 3isn't it a famous greek actress or singer who does that yeah and she
Speaker 2performs this possessed solo vocal well it has percussion and vocal and it's this piece that's supposed to signify the ending of the
Speaker 3earth ritualistic isn't it it's
Speaker 2absolutely possessed like i said it's something that luciano beria would have composed for his wife kathy barbarian or something yoko ona would have done or it's absolutely possessed it's got nothing to do with the tradition of progressive rock it's got everything to do with the tradition of theater performance art and yet it's part of this concept album and there are moments that you'll recognize instantly oh that's archetypal vangelis but there are other moments that there are other moments on this album that are like nothing else i think he did no but there's some
Speaker 3great pop songs i think this is a thing right it is really eccentric eccentric to say the least it does have some great almost kind of post 60s pop you know you can hear that there's kind of hendrix in there sometimes four horsemen is the classic four horsemen is really good what a track um i mean one of the flaws for me in the albums they don't allow demis russos to sing more of the material because he is such a good vocalist and the last track is great right you know the you know the beautiful last track but what's hilarious isn't that the track where it's quite poignant it's and then vangelis is in the background doing some weird scat undermining it almost in a zapper
Speaker 2yeah i think it's beautiful okay beautiful i think it is i think he's undermining it's the drummer singing that's the drummer singing that song
Speaker 3yeah yeah um but it's great i mean the track is great and you're right it kind of goes from avant-garde to post tommy 60s rock to psyched cosmic music to cosmic music a g and c what a track birth of vangelis you're right vangelis um
Speaker 2weird kind of experimental percussion pieces yeah i think they're basically using whatever they can to kind of to try and channel yeah the
Speaker 3story it's a bit of a consequences of an album
Speaker 2in some way it is because probably some of it people would find completely impenetrable yeah
Speaker 3and i think there was a single album version done at one point for one market but from what i can gather it was vangelis right all of the music and he the lyrics written by film director and i think it was a bit of a shock to me because i think it was a bit of a shock to me because i think it was a bit of a shock to me because i think it was a bit of a shock to me because i think it was a bit of a shock to me because i think it was a bit of a shock to me because i think it was a bit of a shock
Speaker 2to me because i think it was a bit of a shock to me because i think it was a bit of a shock to me i mean the use of voices on this record is amazing and i might be confusing that with
Speaker 3another progressive not just
Speaker 2singing voices but narrated voices there's that track loud loud loud which is spoken by this american that's really good isn't it yeah it's great voice it's completely magical yeah and then between each stanza uh this is loud loud loud loud this is very kind of a soporific choral voice just repeating this reference hypnotic it is beautiful it's a magic i mean i use this word a lot i know i use it in relation to zeit i use it in relation to hawkwind there's a sense of otherness about this and it might have something to do with the fact that they're greek that there is this always this tradition of the history and the sound and the culture of greek music but it draws in all
Speaker 3sorts of things you know i think some of the lyrics were inspired by the paris hippie riots and so on in 68 and there's this weird thing running through the album which you say it's kind of magical and trans like which it is but then you have this very english voice going all the seats are occupied oh yes in a kind of steven burkoff way before
Speaker 2tracks or loud loud loud well i love that so there's davros so there's a bit there's bits in the between so the tracks will kind of all flow together yeah so a track will start to fade out and then an english voice will come over and it'll say that was the wedding of the loud now comes the capture of the beast it's like little into introducing this i love that though that's so weird who thought that was a good idea vangelio it was a good idea it is a good idea the battle of the locusts yeah do it love yes that one love it do it i love that i am digging
Speaker 3a mad steven burkoff goes davros but you know what i mean you probably did a more accurate
Speaker 2version actually i absolutely love that about the album i mean the one floor of the album is the fourth side they made a double album they clearly ran out of steam a bit the fourth side all the seats were occupied this is 19 minute long a bit directionless jam yeah but then it ends with that beautiful track break at the end yeah it's really good it's the only flaw on the record for me is that fourth side gets a bit too loose and indulgent but there is nothing else like it yeah under the sun aphrodite's child 666 one of the greatest progressive concept
Speaker 3albums of all time it's a more fascinating that vangelis partly then you know becomes the sort of film soundtrack composer of his generation and making his solo albums which are great he does
Speaker 2actually make a sequel to see his album earth which he made the following year is is is very very close cousin to 666 yeah although
Speaker 3he did one i think about a year before this which is more pastoral with trumpet it's a really lovely
Speaker 2album there's so many great beautiful albums and there's so many different aspects to his musical personality i'm a big fan of his very albums like boborg and uh invisible limits very very
Speaker 3experimental well heaven and hell i quite like heaven and hell it's
Speaker 2more proggy thing yeah and he's then he's got the electronic albums like spiral and china just i mean just one of the greats one of the greats and of course his film soundtracks blade runner for me i'll still hold up as there's one album in 1980 which was
Speaker 3almost his kind of equivalent of an electro pop album but very strange see you later great album really underrated i think and totally up to the minute in terms of the technology and sound very much really good i think
Speaker 2partly because he kind of exist because he never toured he kind of almost existed in his own little bubble yeah so he always felt like he was just in his own world his own bubble um some of the albums he made the 80s fantastic soil festivities mask amazing
Speaker 3records the point is for such an ambitious experimental composer and artist that he left his mark on everyone you know my dad bought vangelis albums because of course blade runner no not sorry charlotte's fire he didn't buy blade runner it was me who bought blade runner charlotte's fire yeah yeah um and this you know could be the first song that many people learn on piano and so on it's kind of but he touched an awful lot of people so outside of his world
Speaker 2he did also i think also with blade runner i think a lot i think a lot of people discovered vangelis music or vangelis vangelis music through is it
Speaker 3vangelis or vangelis i don't know i
Speaker 2think it's vangelis but americans i hear they call it vangelis maybe that's also right let's move on to italy we're moving across across the mediterranean yeah am i getting my geography right there across the mediterranean to to it i hope i'm getting my map of europe have a look we're in the home straight now we're in the home ship just got a couple more albums to talk about and then
Speaker 3we finished we've not ended on jazz we're ending on italian symphony we've done jazz well i deliberately
Speaker 2did that because we always end up on jazz and not today i'm missing it although we are we are going to end up on a controversial one i think okay go on the one that we're not going to agree on anyway italy franco battiato fetus no talk about vangelis being completely unique artist yeah yeah here's an artist this is very odd it's a very italian thing to do this apparently because i don't think he's the only one in italy i can't remember the name there's another artist that has a similar kind of career trajectory where they started out as a very kind of middle-of-the-road pop artist then they went down this incredibly experimental rabbit hole came out the other end and started making eurovision pop and being one of the biggest stars in the world yeah in sorry in italy and that's that in a in a nutshell is the history of franco battiato in fact there's a german equivalent anyway but i digress i think it's
Speaker 3a portuguese equivalent as well
Speaker 2okay yeah franco battiato it's difficult to think of an english equivalent someone who started out
Speaker 3what it is it's a bit like if cliff richard had started with tales of topographic oceans and then went to celebration no
Speaker 2no he'd started doing living doll and move it then gone through the 70s making tales from topographic oceans and king crimson's lizard yeah and then come out the other end basically lizard it's strange stuff this and then come out the other end basically well as cliff richard yeah yeah as chas and dave you know from tells me it's a bit like that but that's apparently that is the career trajectory of franco batty although it's a bit unfair because i think batty alto is very very highly highly respected i think one of the things that we
Speaker 3miss is he's highly respected as a poet as well that people really not sure you're saying cliff is not highly rated as a poet um i mean he should be wired for sound is a great
Speaker 2yeah i like track anyway so this whole point about this guy franco batty alto is that starting in 1972 with this album fetus fetus he made a string of very very experimental strange albums to the point that when they were all reissued reissued a few years ago they were reissued as they had a serious title of the experimental years yeah to kind of recognize the fact this was a very distinctive period in his career where he was very curious very experimental very progressively minded it's progressive but it's not it's music concrete it's i don't know it's got a musical sensibility sometimes it's got sound design it's got avant-garde classical music going on here it's got proto synthesized music it's got
Speaker 3improviser experiments yeah i think that's one of the things that's very interesting it's used as synth yeah i think you know again if you're trying to explain it to somebody who's never heard it before there are certain elements with the more hysterical aspects of early bowie because he can go into a kind of acoustic guitar bits as well yes and hamill yeah so there are kind of pretty so there's a kind of hamill or bowie is most hysterical element there's also a kind of floydian quality sometimes in his use of sound yes and pace yes but you're right that's about it you know and it has a progressive nature in that they're conceptual i think the second album was pollution was it yeah um so the first couple of albums are conceptual works and after this he goes even more out there he has albums like click that are more
Speaker 2minimal very minimalism and repetition comes in and he's using a lot more ostinato figures here it's not it's very fragmented very broken it's a little snatch like you say almost little snatches of songs yeah and then they'll dissolve into some weird experimental synth thing and then it'll go into some sound effect sequence then it'll go back to the little fragment of song that you heard five minutes earlier and it's all kind of put together in this fascinating continuum i mean the albums are not long they're quite succinct they're like 15 minutes like 30 minutes long but they take on a really interesting journey a really interesting ride and it i think more than anything else that we've talked about from this year this album is the one that makes me understand the prevailing kind of atmosphere of the time you can do anything yeah you can go into a recording studio and you can be as experimental and curious and it doesn't matter all bets are off you can try anything it's almost like the batty artefacts i was the one that tells me this more than maybe this and the aphrodisiac child i mean all bets are off fuck it let's do everything let's bring that in let's bring that yeah let's have 30 seconds of a little pop song but then let's dissolve into a sound effects bit and let's have a experimental and it's all on this record and it's all on this record in the space of about three minutes i think that's the fascinating thing about it it's extraordinary you know he is an extraordinary
Speaker 3artist to be one of a country's favorite artists and yeah even more extraordinary that he goes from this to more minimalist to eurovision and um yeah i did some work with um an italian singer called alicia and she worked with batty art i think even did an album of batty arto pieces as well and she held him you know in great esteem so he is you know he was he was a great artist and he was a certainly was a legend in in italy and deservedly so and i'm kind of you know again envious that someone could put these albums out and be a household name in a country it's amazing it's
Speaker 2amazing and it's and it is difficult to think of an equivalent in in british terms i don't think the british the british people the british media would allow almost would not allow someone like that to do that no and
Speaker 3and there is no because i mean of course there are elements of bowie elements of hamill because you know i think when hamill starts working with kind of gog may gog sort of territory and listen to
Speaker 2that on the way here today you know it's a track
Speaker 3yeah extreme extraordinary music but actually you've got a few sensible songs tucked away at different ends of the album it's a different experience the batty arto experience as you say things happen so quickly and dissolve into something else but it's almost
Speaker 2like i suppose the equivalent would be almost like if peter hamill had made all those records in the 70s and then in the 80s had kind of transitioned into being george michael yeah exactly but and also we missed some of the references which wouldn't happen which just wouldn't happen in the uk
Speaker 3no you know it's like the idea of him representing us at eurovision you know rather than bucks fizz
Speaker 2what would that sound like tim making your mind up i think save all your kisses for me in ham style save all your kisses for me oh brilliant in an alternate reality that would have been so good anyway um yeah franco batty we love this album and again i think maybe we talk about the quintessential album years albums this is one of them isn't it this is one of them yeah yeah franco batty's faces this is a phenomenal piece of art and one that probably a lot of people outside of italy maybe even people in italy uh have have never come across even though they would know the name very well they may not know these records he made yeah what about pfm premiata forneria marconi i think i'm right in saying that most of the material on these albums was refashioned with uk lyrics written by pete sinfield for a couple of british uh language albums uh which are called don't tell me photos of ghosts and the world became the world am i right you're pretty much right on that yeah photos of ghosts
Speaker 3combines what i think they thought of as the best of these two albums okay plus i think there's an extra there's a kind of an extra to it i think there's a kind of an extra to it i think there's a short lovely instrumental on it and i really like i think pete sinfield actually did some great work around this time you know i love lizard as you know you know his last we all love this you know we love lizard obviously did iron as well but i love the roxy album i love photos of ghosts and his own solo album from 73 still i think is you know a bit of a neglected classic very lovely record so yeah he produced photos of ghosts which i think is really quite nice these two albums i guess you know it's it's an italian band drawing from aspects of genesis yes elp toll in parts but doing it really well they've got yeah a very delicate quality at times which i like a lot apart from when the world became the world which has an almost kind of crimson-esque i
Speaker 2think i think if i have a problem at pfm is it's too easy to hear what their record collection is uh very often uh maybe world became the world sounds like in the court of the crimson king yeah some other tracks sound like uh the very pastoral 12 stringy pastoral you know genesis e um then there's the synth past the very elpe they've got a slightly more furious jazz fusion aspect going on sometimes which i which i like i enjoy i do like these records but they do sound like a product of listening to a lot of british yes although i think
Speaker 3the vocals give it a very definitive character of its own
Speaker 2right i i do like i do like the record here's a record i don't like so this is the last record we're going to talk about in 1972 you like this tim i don't like it at all it's a progressive masterpiece it's so overwrought and so hysterically over the top i find it um slightly ridiculous but i know it has its fans and you are one of them so try and describe this album to us tim well i
Speaker 3think one of the things that is interesting is that vandergraft generators pawn hearts which is an extraordinary uncompromising album was number one in italy for a very very long time and hamill and vandergraft had an enormous impact on the italian music scene this is perhaps the most explicit i mean little may had elements of it but this is the most explicit vandergraft hamill pawn hearts influenced album of that progressive italiana i can't hear that
Speaker 2at all i can't hear that at
Speaker 3all it's really extreme in parts quite dissonant it has those kind of i think satanic riffs there's one bit that i think is amazing where it just has this kind of quite slight groove it's kind of like a bass groove minor key bass groove and the piano is very mike garson and it actually sounds a lot like david bowie's outside in places or the stranger parts of aladdin sane by david bowie
Speaker 2so you're saying to the folks they should go and folks go and check this i know i've i know i've directed the fans the listeners i should say to a lot of albums that they've ended up hating yeah yeah i know i've done that probably more than you've done that i've done that il belletto
Speaker 3di bronzo tim i think tim
Speaker 2is recommending you go and listen to il belletto di bronzo's east
Speaker 3yeah so imagine elp from hell meets pawn hearts no but that makes it sound with elements of david bowie's more experimental music to come yeah but you see
Speaker 2that sounds like my perfect album this is
Speaker 3your perfect album it's awful
Speaker 2it's awful it's awful sorry i like it and they
Speaker 3look great as well
Speaker 2i don't particularly like it okay there's a lot about the italian progressive rock bands that doesn't appeal to me it is the operatic sensibility the reason i love the german music for all the reasons we mentioned the reason i don't like the italian some of the italian bands anyway is that tradition of the more operatic there's a melodrama melodrama yes um but obviously the italians they love they love their opera listen they've always and that's what i mean they've always embraced our music over the years
Speaker 3as well i you know so i've got a fondness even for you know banco area l'orme they did an album contra punty if you know that one their 74 album
Speaker 2really interesting i love aria i love artie and mystery or however you say their name um i love a lot of italian music uh marizio bianchi industrial is what you love some of the sickest industrial music you'll ever hear uh battiato big fan big fan just not so much a fan of the more symphonic operatic um strain of italian progressive i think they do it
Speaker 3well um in the way that focus do you know focus in some ways really fit very nicely with that british explosion of progressive music and some of the italians do really you know photos of ghosts sat nicely with foxtrot in the there's another record collection
Speaker 2there's another fascinating italian claudia rocky i think his name is i don't know the name he kind of uh also started off making these very experimental records and gradually turned into a very experimental record and i think it's a really interesting transition to be more of a sort of you know a pop icon but they seem to have this uh career trajectory where you can start off making very experimental music and it's okay for you to gradually transition into being more you know kind of um more of a sort of family family artist if you like you're right thank god that didn't happen in the way that the french i mean the
Speaker 3french i think had the thing where a lot of musicians were also actors and writers you know that was kind of interesting there was a few you know they had multiple girls and they were great french albums this year you know brigitte fontaine uh does a fantastic album serge gansberg's arranger jean-claude vanier fantastic cinematic album there's really interesting music by the way you know
Speaker 2that album to me you're telling me about pete simpson earlier still that you think's really good is that where you keep giving it to me over the years still yeah you've given to me about three times i've said i don't want that you have that i've got a copy yeah you'll be giving it to me soon
Speaker 3it might end up in a blind bag that's true i've never kept it either to be fair but i'm not claiming it to be true the problem is with my collection where obviously i'm still sort of buying and listening and so on but i'm actually going for that mark hollis thing of leading towards silence where gradually everything is going where just a tiny note offends me you're just going to be left with
Speaker 2one john martin
Speaker 3and i will be left with one john martin song one single and pink moon
Speaker 2pink moon by nick drake and that's
Speaker 3it i'll be staring at a wall weeping yeah and then even that will be too much well that's fine my original island copy of pink moon at you outside of my window well that's fine
Speaker 2so the the the 2030 even i'm staring at the wall the 2030 edition of the album years will be tim talking about the one song that he knows yeah it'll
Speaker 3never be down to the one note that i like
Speaker 2so tim let's wrap it up there i'm already noticing some albums that we've managed to skip over we've managed to keep our expectations facing we didn't talk about or netcom we didn't but let's just draw across this is a cruel year a cruel year why cruel because there's so much there's so much
Speaker 3there's so much bringing out the worst in us we're rambling so we're losing our
Speaker 2focus i'm looking at the clock here in the crystal spotlight uh podcast recording room and it's it's even the clock is looking weary at this point it's
Speaker 3exhausted we've we've got sick during the course of this can we
Speaker 2not can in the next episode can we just can we just do a year where everything is shit and we hate everything we said that before haven't we we have said that we haven't done it we haven't followed up on it though just pick a year that everything we hate everything or we just just don't know anything about anything we just have the readers review everything tim and we nod our heads talking about cruelty i'm gonna be very cruel now because i'm gonna ask you to pick don't do what you always do so it's so hard it's so hard i know it's hard pick okay let's say you're allowed to pick three albums from this year that you would take to a desert island from from the year 1972 and then we'll move on to the most influential that's going to be hard isn't it most influential record from 1972 what are you going to say do you want to give you some clues you're going to say roxy music you're going to say pink moon and you can say close to the edge am i right three out of three you're
Speaker 3pretty close i mean i certainly i don't know because for the roses yeah i know you say that very very very yeah you i'd say well
Speaker 2you're allowed you're allowed as many as you like um as many as you like um i'm going to say i'm going to say i'm going to say
Speaker 3like yeah i mean you know pink moon is the the greatest drake achievement in some
Speaker 2ways today is tomorrow it will be
Speaker 3brighter later yeah and i really like the oppressive brutal battle funk of on the corner as well me too that's i do think close to the edge is the greatest progressive rock album of all time so that should be in my list if you
Speaker 2discount dark side of the moon it's i prefer dark time is there something about dark i'm not sure that's the moon anymore but pink floyd kind of occupy a different place yeah no you're
Speaker 3probably right if you're
Speaker 2talking about the classic progressive rock tropes close to the edge is the definitive album as i was coming here
Speaker 3i was going to give you one answer i was going to be really really succinct go on then i was going to go with roxy music by roxy music because it covers so much grand it's exciting it's beautiful it's chaotic it's hooky um it's rootsy it's futuristic it's a great record well i was going to perhaps
Speaker 2suggest that as one of the albums you could say is is the most influential except the caveat to that is of course as i think you pointed out when we talked about it it's a hard thing to imitate yeah it's a hard thing to imitate um okay it's so that is that your is that your
Speaker 3what roxy music
Speaker 2roxy nick drake close to the edge for the roses and on the corner on the corner that's five that's a pretty good five that's a pretty good five i mean again that could easily be my five too but i'm going to go with tangerine dream zeit of course is my all-time number one it's got to be one it's got to be my number one close to the edge definitely definitely definitely i love the slider by t-rex it's a great
Speaker 3album it's a really i mean that's a strong album there's not really a misstep on it no brilliant i
Speaker 2think it's the peak of boland aphrodite child 666 i have to have yeah just it's a great album it's a really i mean that's a strong album it's not really a misstep on it phenomenal i wouldn't put the journey album in my in my best of the year i love it but to me it it's not quite up there with ajira blue those kind of no isn't um noi i love the noi album absolutely adore it and actually i was going to say maybe the noi album could be a candidate for most influential as
Speaker 3well i was going to go for noi as most influential in that i can still hear it in experimental indie bands now but definitely you could hear it you know 70s and 80s post punk wouldn't exist without hallow gallo and negative
Speaker 2land and also sabbath's volume four although you could pick any of the first six sabbath albums and say this is the these are the albums which inform almost yeah they're
Speaker 3great i've just got a real soft spot for sabotage me too
Speaker 2i mean i i wouldn't pick four as my favorite so although i love it i think it's an influential record probably black sabbath black the first album is the one that really set the template
Speaker 3that's also got the best cover i think it's got the best cover
Speaker 2of all in fact yeah tangerine tangerine dream sight is my favorite album black sabbath first album's got my favorite album but you know there
Speaker 3were so many here because you know if i'm talking about you know best songs of the year something like dust you know from the fleetwood mac and one of the great covers of this era and as we've said i think that you know when we listen to the brazilian album milton national yeah um exquisite yeah love
Speaker 2that too love that too so many so many great records well there you go folks that's 1972 and thank you for the for the listeners reviews uh on this episode i think they were very interesting yeah they were all fantastic pretty much chimed with what we felt too which is always good i'm looking forward to the ones that don't just because it will make for an interesting uh discussion that if somebody has a very different view of us but i think today generally we were in accord with the the reviewers
Speaker 3so yeah i think that's true and obviously as we always must end please press that like button oh yes
Speaker 2sorry yeah please if you like our podcast give us a review do it
Speaker 3in a mechanical way and
Speaker 2recommend us to your chums is that right so i think so recommend that is chums yeah okay thank you very much folks uh we'll be back with another year soon i don't know what's going to be yet did we team we haven't decided
Speaker 3yet we haven't although i think we're going to do 1982 at some point we do want to
Speaker 2do 1982 at some point we like to do things in tens don't we so 1972 we've done that before you may do that again thank you very much for for watching for listening goodbye from me and goodbye from tim goodbye mr monopoly here miss me monopoly is back at
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