Midwich Youth Club - From the City to the
Country, From the Country to the Sea (Soft Bodies)
DL/Cassette
Out Now
Multi-instrumentalist Allan R Murphy releases a
new album under the guise of Midwich Youth Club.
The long title to this album is maybe a clue to
what lies in store. Ten tracks – From
The City To The Country and From The Country To The Sea, both in five parts
each. It already sounds as bit
prog-rock? It is.
Allan is a multi-instrumentalist and as such has
my undying respect straight away. He’s
been releasing stuff since 1984 under several guises and associations such as
Midwich Youth Club, Megatory And Betty, Pages From Ceefax and Jerk Test and is
clearly influenced by themes and incidental music.
True to my claim that ‘anything deserves one
listen’ I persevered with the album. The
second part of my claim is ‘but, not necessarily a second’ and given that the
words ‘prog-rock’ have already been mentioned, I’m sort of giving away what I
feel about the album. It’s all a bit
1970s Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Rick Wakeman to me, and I’m not the biggest fan. That aside, I think it’s always important to
forget any preconceptions and get on with the job in hand.
Given that this is one bloke, it’s impressive and
I love the indecipherable, muffled, background voices in the early parts of
From The City To The Country. There are
also some random blips and beeps which lifted the tracks slightly from something
which may have been a bit monotonous.
The album is said to be a musical journey and I
can see where that’s coming from. From
The Country To The Sea incorporates bird sounds and chatterings and ebbing
tides again it makes the compositions more interesting. There’s arguably an audience for this kind of
stuff and that’s good. I can also
appreciate what people may like about it, but for me it sounds slightly dated
and lacks excitement. Danny Baker
clearly professed a love of prog-rock on his recent Rockin’ Decades TV
programme and I’m sure he’d love this album, but for me it’s all been done
before.
You can download From The City on Bandcamp here.
6/10
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