Читать книгу The Mojo Collection - Various Mojo Magazine - Страница 105

Record label: Fontana

Produced: Dick Leahy and Jack Baverstock

Recorded: Stanhope Place Studios, London; mid-1967

Released: November 1967

Chart peaks: None (UK) None (US)

Personnel: Peter Daltrey (v, k); Eddie Pumer (g); Steve Clark (b); Danny Bridgman (d); John Cameron (ar); John Paul Jones (b); Clem Cattini (d); Dave Voyde (e)

Track listing: Kaleidoscope; Please Excuse My Face; Dive Into Yesterday; Mr Small The Watch Repairer Man; Flight From Ashiya; The Murder Of Lewis Tollani; (Further Reflections) In The Room Of Percussion; Dear Nellie Goodrich; Holidaymaker; A Lesson Perhaps; The Sky Children

Running time: 36.20

Current CD: Repertoire REPUK1077 adds: Flight From Ashiya; Holiday Maker; A Dream For Julie; Please Excuse My Face; Jenny Articoke; Just How Much You Are

Further listening: As Fairfield Parlour – From Home To Home (1970)

Further reading: http://hem.passagen.se/chla10-14/

Download: Not currently legally available. Dive Into Yesterday can be found on iTunes

The clever money in early ’67 was on a pioneering bunch of groups whose trade was neither R&B nor hit-parade pop, but something altogether odder, more visual, quite new. Pink Floyd, The Soft Machine and Kaleidoscope hogged the column inches but the latter – the ones with the nimblest melodies – were destined for a long run of near-misses.

Originally The Sidekicks, a beat group from Harrow, they became The Key in 1965 and, on signing to Fontana in late 1966, Kaleidoscope. As their line-up had remained constant, their debut 45 (Flight From Ashiya c/w Holidaymaker) sounded supertight. Replete with Pumer’s nerve-jangling guitar line and exquisite vocal interplay, Flight was played to death by the pirates and, though not a hit, encouraged Fontana enough to proceed with the album.

Opening with plucked harp and ferocious drums, the self-titled signature tune sets the scene for Tangerine Dream. Like The Bee Gees or The Kinks, Peter Daltrey’s songs are vignettes; pilots on their final flights, elderly watch repairers (prescient of Mark Wirtz’s Teenage Opera), Dickensian murder scenes. Everywhere there are beautiful drones courtesy of Pumer, fine high harmonies. All is crisp. Ultimately there is Dive Into Yesterday – five minutes of ebbing and flowing, atonal scraped guitar and a dive-bombing Duane Eddy hookline – and The Sky Children, which maintains beautiful fairytale imagery with an astonishingly simple and hypnotic arrangement for a full nine minutes.

‘Their songs are the best since The Beatles,’ said that pop oracle The Daily Sketch. Radio One offered them session after session. Kenny Everett called them ‘incredible’. Tangerine Dream exuded summertime optimism, but it was sadly misplaced. Three more albums followed (two as Fairfield Parlour, the last not obtaining a release until the ’90s) but a place deep in the heart of psych fanatics is all Kaleidoscope earned after such a promising start.