Basil Harwood: Music for Organ

Advantages: its fantastic
Disadvantages: not enough airplay

...I lost my heart to a Starship Trooper. The immortal words from Sarah Brightman and Hot Gossip. I apologise that this opinion is under the wrong heading but I know they used this song for the promotion of Starship Troopers. Produced in the late seventies I think this is one of those underated songs in the history of music. This song is astoundingly quite groundbreaking for the decade in which it was released. Its use of samples and special effects of lasers was a relatively new idea at the time put that together with a fantastic singer like Sarah Brightman and a catchy chorus line which has all looking up at the stars. This catchy little number reflected the Stars Wars phenomena that had taken the world by storm at that time, but actually what we see in this little piece of music is the ground work being done for the electronic sounds... Read review

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Advantages: all of sides one and two
Disadvantages: some of sides three and four

..., Lee Harvey Oswald, Elizabeth Taylor, a Zeppelin and a giant cat amongst others. Aaah, the old vinyl album covers. Some of them were better than the music contained therein. Stephen Davis in his very readable book "Hammer Of The Gods" describes this as the "hardest hard rock album ever made", and whilst that certainly applies to all of sides one and two, there are parts of sides three and four that don't quite live up to that billing. The running order doesn't help in that respect, although you must bear in mind this is not an "Album" in the normal manner; it is a series of remastered outtakes and previously unreleased material, much of it from the 1971 Headley Grange and 1972 Stargroves sessions that produced "LZ IV" and "Houses of the holy" respectively, even to going back as far as 1970's acoustic "III" album. Physical... Read review

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Advantages: A rich tapestry of eccentricity and good, but obscure music
Disadvantages: A couple of weak tracks

...... Now, the tracks themselves. The problem with samplers is that they tend to cover a lot of stylistic ground, so I'll just pick out the highlights. Lets start with the "Music" section. Lots to pick from here, the first being a Basil Kirchin demo track, a gorgeous electric folk song with some terrific "Crazy Diamond"-era style Dave Gilmour guitar and a young womans vocals. Magic. Next up is a library track by Sven Libaek, good cocktail lounge jazz with a slight attitude/energy, followed by a track by Jonny himself, a rather good affair that seems to be based around a sample (I think) from the 60's French TV version of Robinson Crusoe. (remember that classic?) In fact, I'd say most of the music on here is excellent: synthy stuff from Delia Derbyshire (yes, that one, Dr. Who fans!) more folk, more sublime Basil Kirchin. And John Cameron... Read review

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