Label: Hux Records (UK), HUX 083
Style: Canterbury Scene, Jazz Rock, Progressive Rock
Country: Canterbury, England
Time: 77:53
Format: Flac Tracks 16/44,1 kHz
Size: 437 Mb
Matching
Mole may have lasted just under a year when it surfaced 35 years ago,
but public interest in drummer/vocalist Robert Wyatt's first post-Soft
Machine project continues to be strong. On the Radio isn't the first
archival live release, and nearly three-quarters of the material was
previously available, but only for a short time. This remastered reissue
of five BBC Radio studio and live dates features significantly improved
sound, but what sets it apart from the earlier Windsong BBC release is
the previously unavailable twenty-minute medley that opens this
78-minute disc.
Matching Mole began as a solo project for Wyatt. But
the chemistry that emerged with pianist David MacRae, guitarist Phil
Miller, bassist Bill MacCormick and organist Dave Sinclair (who left
after the first album and appears on only two dates here) quickly turned
it into a group effort.
Matching Mole and Little Red Record, both
released by Columbia in 1972, may have been good, but this band was best
experienced live. While only a third of these radio recordings were
recorded in concert in front of an audience, the studio sessions were
"live off the floor, with the same energy and excitement that's missing
on the group's studio albums.
Wyatt left Soft Machine because of the
band's shift from song form towards a mix of detailed composition and
open-ended improvisation. While it sounds nothing like Soft Machine,
Matching Mole did place a similar emphasis on improvisation. No two
versions of a tune ever sounded the same, making any duplication here
revealing, rather than superfluous. Even the way the group would segue
from one song to the next varied from night to night.
Despite the
group's loose approach to interpretation, there's a stronger sense of
melody-lyricism, even-compared to the Soft Machine of the same period.
Miller was already a distinctive player, with a keen ear for finding
unexpected ways to weave through the material. Like Miller, MacRae was
consistently intriguing yet never self-indulgent. Wyatt-whose career
behind the kit would be cut short not long after he dissolved the group
when an accident left him paralyzed from the waist down-may have
gravitated to song form, but he was a loose and subtly responsive
drummer. The biggest surprise about MacCormick is that he'd only been
playing bass for eighteen months before joining the group.
The sound
quality varies, despite Hux's fine remastering job. The opening twenty
minutes are the best sonically, but even the lower-fidelity tracks are
clear and easy on the ears. There's not a single track on this record
that hasn't appeared elsewhere in a different form. But On the Radio is
the best album to date from this short-lived but influential group, a
band that ranged from elegant understatement to sheer power.
(allaboutjazz.com/on-the-radio-matching-mole-hux-records-review-by-john-kelman)
01. Instant Pussy / Smoke Signal (20:33)
02. Part Of The Dance (07:56)
03. No 'alf Measures (06:49)
04. Lithing And Gracing (07:18)
05. Immediate Kitten (09:59)
06. Instant Pussy (05:47)
07. Lithing And Gracing (04:49)
08. Marchides (06:49)
09. Part Of The Dance (06:32)
10. Brandy As In Benj (01:16)
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