Artist: The Bevis Frond
Title: Miasma
Format: LP
Label: Reckless Records
Catalogue Number: Reck 13
Year of Release: 1986
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Tracklisting
A1 Garden Gate (1:05)
A2 She's in Love with Time (6:04)
A3 Wild Mind (6:53)
A4 Wild Afterthought (2:17)
A5 Splendid Isolation (3:50)
B1 The Earl of Walthamstowe (0:43)
B2 The Newgate Wind (5:16)
B3 Maybe (4:18)
B4 Ride the Train of Thought (4:09)
B5 Confusion Days (6:24)
This kind of washes over you in a fug of overdriven guitars, bedroom psychedelia and tape-based sampling.
It's also, I'm afraid to admit, the first record I've listened to and thought - "my god the sound quality is AWFUL". It really did need capitalising, honestly. And this is a shame, as I don't want to bad-mouth the Frond. I enjoy his/their brand of homespun psychedelic rock. It's just that on this particular release, the 4-track portastudio production really shows.
This shows much promise though, and I'm not the only one to think so, or he wouldn't have been able to forge the career he has, single-mindedly ignoring the mainstream music business a long time before Radiohead went and made it all fashionable again.
Highlights though - oddly harpsichordic Earl of Walthamstowe, cool, laid-back fuzz pop on Ride the Train of Thought, and Hendrix-wannabe duelling-with-himself guitar-solo-orgy Wild Mind.
The quality of both the production and, in my opinion, song-writing gets better over the releases that follow. But then so does the propensity towards 20-minute guitar work-outs. Still, should be fun...
