Francis Monkman - Energism (1978) & Paul Hart - Futurism (1981) (2015 compilation)

Two albums from the classic British libary music label Bruton, beautifully remastered on one CD from Dutton Vocalion - got quite a few CDs from the latter in recent months.  Their website (duttonvocalion.co uk) is worth a browse: very cheap in the "bargain basement", and they reissue tons of easy listening, exotic & library music in superb sound quality.  More will appear here in due course (Terry Durham already has, along with a couple of others early on, Stanley Black IIRC).

Bruton Music was founded in 1977 as a label that would produce modern-sounding library music with British composers and musicians, and were known for their iconic colour-coded LP sleeves.  Dark orange was for electronic music, and contained here are two cracking early examples of this line.  The reissue cover art above is an amalgam of the two, which are Engergism ("The doctrine of materialism that right action is the efficient exercise of normal capacities") by Francis Monkman, and Futurism ("Aesthetic movement pointing the way to the future") by Paul Hart - love those little text descriptions Bruton added to the covers, the first one in particular reads a bit like a Stereolab lyric.

The 29-minute long Engergism is a great little collection of mostly upbeat, bright themes by Curved Air/Sky keyboardist Monkman. Burbling synth arpeggios, nifty percussion and twanging bass abound, as do some really nice earwormy melodies.  This is definitely library music at its finest (just very good electronic music too - it was reissued on Klaus Schulze's IC label), and the 43 minutes of Hart's Futurism that follow are even better.  The tracks by this library music stalwart are in a similar vein, beautifully composed and arranged, but have longer tracks on average, two of them in fact nudging six minutes.  Program out the 11-second Pace Of Change reprise (a giveaway that you're listening to a library LP) and Futurism could again just be a really good instrumental synth record.  That Pastorious-esque fretless bass on Times To Come is another sweet addition to a great album.

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