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"The Phoenix Tapes Volumes 5/6/7

These three discs continue the story of English Stone Premonitions label and guitarist/singer Tim Jones from the late 80’s to the mid 90’s. It’s been a while since I got the discs but they were somehow magically lost in my huge, bottomless box of un-reviewed CD’s (where anything is possible)… Volume 5 deals with the years 1988-1989 that seems to have been a very musically active time for Tim. When the Tongue band disbanded Tim and bassist Bazz decided to start a duo together called Somebody Famous that included programmed drums. This meant that they could get much more gigs since some pubs were only allowed to have two performers at the time. The duo did well on the live front although the programmed drums brought in some new challenges especially in places that had bad monitoring. The first seven tracks on the album were recorded on a four-track and the demo was made to get more gigs. There are some fast and pounding numbers as well as some a bit more peaceful, pop-like material. This stuff is not really that psychedelic, but still includes pretty nice songs. At least the drunken bikers liked them when the volume was high enough, I’ve heard. The following track ”Powers That Be” was recorded by Tim alone at his home-studio in 1989 and the very critical lyrics by Paul Winstanley tell about the blowing up of Greenpeace boat Rainbow Warrior where one of Paul’s friends got killed. Next up is some more Somebody Famous material (for example a couple of single tracks and some live stuff also including some psychedelic improvisation), now with a new bass player and a real drummer. This is quite typical late 80’s pop-rock, but of course Tim always has his own vibe in making music and some of the guitar solos are pretty wild. At some point the bassist was changed into a guy with a fretless bass, which brought in a new dimension.

Volume 6 has material from years 1989-1991. The first eight tracks are by a project called Mosaic (Tim Jones: electric guitar and Tibetan Bells, Mark Erickson: flute and Tibetan Bells) that started out when Tim and Mark were commissioned to write and record the musical backdrop for and interactive Rainforest exhibition. Mosaic’s instrumental music is very beautiful, tranquil and atmospheric and I do like these songs a lot. “Whirligig” was very much inspired by Soft Machine’s track “The Floating World”. Then we’ve got six tracks that Tim recorded alone in his home studio. ”Chatter-H” has just wacky narration, ”So Near And Yet So Far” and ”Rainy Days” are more in the pop vein and ”Empires Fall” very energetic going. The rest of the tracks on this disc were taken from the Somebody Famous CD ”The Ship of Grandad’s Day” where Tim got to play also some Roland guitar synthesizer in addition to acoustic and electric guitar. These numbers have a very nostalgic mood but also some psychedelic elements.

The four first tracks on Volume 7 (1991-1994) are also from the aforementioned CD. In 1991 Tim Jones met Terry~B with whom he has since made lots of music as well as a son. This meeting might also explain some of the late Almost Famous songs like ”Love Reaction”, ”The Only Girl (For Terri)” and ”Love Is” that are included on this compilation… The early 90’s were also a time for Tim to get into more advanced studio technology, and he had a great opportunity to do just that. After Somebody Famous broke up Tim kept on playing with drummer Steve Sekrit and together with Terri~B and Steve’s partner Finn Millar they formed The Permanent Haze and this disc has a couple of their relaxed, nice tracks with acoustic guitar, keyboards, male and female vocals and percussion. Later on, Steve and Finn put together Shay Tall, while Tim and Terry started The Rabbit’s Hat band along with keyboardist Steve Ellis. The last seven songs on Volume 7 are by this great band, and five of them are previously unreleased. “Feed Your Head” has appeared on a couple of other albums but apparently these are re-recorded versions.

The Phoenix Tapes series ends here, at least at this point in time and space, but Tim and Terri~B have of course continued to make music together very actively in addition to The Rabbit’s Hat for example in psychedelic bands Census of Hallucinations and Body Full of Stars as well as released lots of music by other bands like Krom Lek and Mr. Quimpy’s Beard. The output of this couple is absolutely worth getting into!

(Reviewed by DJ Astro - The Psychotropic Zone)