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"The Phoenix Tapes Volumes 2/3/4

Here are three volumes in the series about musical history of the Stone Premonitions label’s Tim Jones. Last year, I reviewed the first volume that included some of Tim’s 70’s activities. Tim has apparently been busy in the 80’s, since that’s the time period that all these discs deal with. The mood is indeed very 80’s, in good and in bad.

Volume 2 (1980 – 1984) starts off with twelve tracks that form a previously unreleased mini LP A Delicate Talking Mechanism and were recorded at Durham University Electronic Music Studio. These are all Tim’s own songs and he sings and plays electric and acoustic guitar and percussion with a bassist, keyboardist and a drummer. The music is mostly pretty nice 80’s pop, but there is also some weirder, experimental material in there. I can sense some Daevid Allen/Gong vibes from time to time on several tracks and some of them have just acoustic guitar and vocals. The next three were recorded at rehearsals more or less with acoustic instruments, and keeping that in mind “Staring at Nothing” is a more punky number than one might expect. The peaceful and laid-back song “get Out While You Can” also has some electric guitar. Recorded with the same line-up but in a more electric manner in 1981, the couple of next numbers are more funky stuff. Then Tim got into the world of programmed drums and also “Prisoners of the Real World” is pretty funky bringing to mind Prince a bit. The bass and guitar sounds on “Why We Do” bring to mind early 80’s King Crimson. The album is finished with “Ramehead” and “Ruby” the former being a bit lame but the latter is an excellent track with psychedelic vocals, acoustic guitar and light keyboards.

The next disc Volume 3 includes Tim’s music adventures from between the years 1984 and 1987. The disc opens with a really great and closer to eight minutes long, synth-driven psych pop number called ”Soft Explosions of Fragments of Colour”. “People in Power” is pretty good too, as well as “Message from Beyond” that has pretty ambient guitar and vocals. Originating from the same sessions is also the bit funny “I Like to Travel”. The rather spontaneous “I Object” has also a nice guitar solo and some narration. Then follows a couple of more psychedelic synth tracks that Tim recorded by himself and especially the latter is a real flash-back and actually very good. Then it gets more rocking for a couple of songs and “Hard Man” is actually almost hard rock. Then we’ve got a short acoustic number, and two versions of the track “Dancing Feet” that is funky 80’s dance music with a disco beat recorded in a real 16-track studio! This brings to mind “Let’s Dance” by David Bowie... Maybe this was an attempt by Tim’s band (Somebody Famous) to become very popular?! The track was released in 1986 on a 12” single and during the following year they also recorded a full-length album and the last five tracks on this compilation are from a demo version of that album. Three of the tracks are nice pop music, one a bit in the AOR vein and the last one brings to mind Rush of that era. Some members of the Somebody Famous project have also been working as a tour manager for Pink Floyd and Peter Gabriel, a producer for Björk and one has worked with Nine Inch Nails.

Volume 4 continues with six more Somebody Famous songs the first of which is a new version of ”I Like to Travel”. “Sue” is an excellent, peaceful and floating number, the more rocking “Water” sounds like “King Crimson or Rush. Also the three following tracks are very nice stuff. The reggae styled “Love Will Stay”, the pop-like “Love Reaction” and The Police styled “Stop Playing” were also recorded at the same Prism Sound Studio with a partially same line-up. Recorded as The Tongue, the fast “In My Life” is more or less rock’n’roll, ”Get Out While You Can” also has some soloing. Starting off with some narration, the short psychedelic ambient piece “Bron’s Kite” begins the cluster of nine songs that Tim recorded in 1988 with four-track helped by a few friends on some of the tracks. These tracks include some very nice progressive pop-rock and occasionally also a bit more psychedelic touch. The best one is the last called “Voice on Tape” that starts off with a hallucinatory speech and ends in prime, instrumental psych rock. Why does it have to be so short… The Volumes 5-7 of this series have also been released but I just don’t have them yet…

(Reviewed by DJ Astro - The Psychotropic Zone)