Studio Herald, then, is likely to have been a further overspill from the two albums' worth of material that made up Radio & Green - it's in a similar ballpark, with the nine-minute New Age Synthesis (Unzipping The Zype) particularly good. Elsewhere, Hillage attempts to go punk on 1988 Aktivator and just comes off a bit Hawkwind, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - overall, Studio Herald is a decent EP overture. So how about Open?
As mentioned above, Hillage rejigged the track order for this release, resulting in LP closer Earthrise being the first thing from Open that we get here. It's based on a melody by Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum, and works well in this arrangement. The title track comes next, with a bit of nifty vocoder and the same twee-but-pleasant lyrics as on Motivation Radio. As on the other Open tracks, the synths & sequences are well integrated with the guitars and gently funky rhythms, making this album a sort of distillation of its two predecessors, with its high point probably Day After Day (which was the original LP opener). The Beatles cover is a bit slight but fun in a Hillage kind of way, and don't miss the muscular workout Don't Dither Do It near the end of the CD.
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pw: sgtg
Previously posted at SGTG:
Motivation Radio
Green
Rainbow Dome Musick
with Gong: You
with System 7: Point 3: Water
Oh my! - saw Hillage on this tour circa '79, I think at the old Odeon in Edinburgh if memory serves my 16 year old self right.
ReplyDeleteBet that was a great gig. By the time I moved here in '99, that venue was on its last legs as a cinema, and it's been boarded up ever since. Wish someone would do something with the building (although it'd most likely end up as a Wetherspoons, I suppose).
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