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Urban75 Album of the Year 1974

From JA already mentioned are two bonafide masterpieces IMO: King Tubby Meets The Upsetter at the Grass Roots of Dub + Burning Spear's Rocking Time. Highwater marks for JA music in album form.

Keith Hudson & Family Man - Pick A Dub is one of the first dub albums and definitely deserves its mention, but in the fullness of time its a rank below the two above, and not that different from a lot of dub albums of the time..

Theres a bunch (4?) of Studio One "Dub Specialist" albums ("Dub Specialist is a name used for a series of dub LP releases from Studio One throughout the 70s. These limited edition albums were mixed down by a number of engineers over the decade, including Sylvan Morris, Syd Bucknor & Overton "Scientist" Brown")
Better Dub has so many classic Studio One riddims on it its probably the pick of the crop. I think technically these could be said to be compilations of studio 1 b-sides, Id imagine most if not all had been released as 7s. But a set of albums worth having/downloading anyway:
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One not mentioned that is truly special and deserves your vote is Cedric IM Brooks led The Light Of Saba LP
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This was pretty obscure until Honest Jons put out a massive Light of Saba compilation (as Magical Light Of Saba).
This is a spiritual jazz meets rasta meets mystical earth vibrations affair, a massive boundary pushing from what else is happening in an already boundary pushing jamaican music scene.

Here's the Honest Jons write up of the compilation:
Cedric Im Brooks is an old boy of the Alpha School in Kingston, Jamaica, alongside alumni like Don Drummond, Johnny Moore and Tommy McCook of The Skatalites, jazzmen Joe Harriott and Harold McNair, and too many other musical giants to mention. He was a member of The Vagabonds, before Jimmy James moved the group to England, and during the sixties toured Caribbean hotels and clubs with various big bands and combos. His own musical horizons — especially the new jazz music — were increasingly distant from these constrained commercial contexts; and he eagerly accepted an invitation to visit a friend in the U.S.

In Philadelphia, Cedric was awe-struck by the music and vibes of the Sun Ra Arkestra. He was on the point of joining the commune when the birth of his second daughter necessitated his return to Jamaica. Amazingly, though rocksteady was in full swing on the island, Cedric took up Ra’s challenge by starting The Mystics, to experiment with free jazz and poetry, African robes and dancers.

During this period, Cedric’s long association with Studio One produced the hit single ‘Money Maker’; and his musical direction of Count Ossie’s Mystic Revelation of Rastafari was commemorated by the classic Grounation triple-LP set, before his frustrations with purely rasta patterns encouraged him to set up The Light of Saba, to go into other aspects of African drumming.

Taking leads from Hugh Masekela and Fela Kuti, the recordings of Cedric Im Brooks and The Light of Saba delineate ‘world music’ way ahead of its time. They offer a blend of African and US, Cuban and other West Indian influences — calypso and funk, rumba and bebop, nyabinghi and disco — magnificently expressed as classic reggae. This compilation is drawn from extremely rare singles and LPs.


‘Mystical, uplifting, sensual, difficult. If you like your reggae
deep and dark, with splashes of primitive funk and a real feel for roots, then this is for you’ (Record Collector).
‘One for those who think they’ve heard it all’ (Mojo).
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I'll definitely vote Stevie Wonders Fulfillingness' First Finale , killer stevie 70s soul... this my favourite track on it
 
I don't think these guys were ever famous, and as far I know they never recorded again, but it's Irish trad in a sort of Steeleye Span vein. And it's absolutely outstanding:

 
hitmouse said:
Oh, apparently there was a band called Roxy Music who had an album called Country Life that came out in 1974. Does anyone know if Roxy Music were any good?
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I remember a letter to the NME at the time, complaining that the cover of this album was "two tarts playing with themselves." Being quite naive then, I wasn´t entirely sure what it meant.
 
Have we had this one yet?



Joni in '74 - I think her Miles of Aisles album was the same year. Anyway, C & S was the best thing of the year, obviously, even if I went off Freeman in Paris after I found out it was about David Geffen.
 
I have plan involving creating Spotify lists for all my recommendations. But not everything is on Spotify including Albert Marcœur extraordinary debut. So here is a highlight of it:



It's a kind of post-Zappa proto rock in opposition madness and silliness that sounds very familiar today, except in 1974 nothing sounded like this.
 
I'm playing catch up really. I put on Mike Oldfield's Hergest Ridge just to re-evaluate it. I used to love it and listening to it again it's better than I ever thought it was, or at least the first side. In fact I think that first side is easily the best thing he ever did. Very strong melodic writing. Fantastic phrasing with call and response lines tracing some really tasty chord loops. Instrumental story telling. I had to listen to again immediately afterwards. And then I listened to it again. And again. And again. And again. Hence I need to catch up.

I love this. The climax of the first side:



The second side is OK too but it's a build to bombastic synth thing, which is a bit meh.
 
Knotted said:
I'm playing catch up really. I put on Mike Oldfield's Hergest Ridge just to re-evaluate it. I used to love it and listening to it again it's better than I ever thought it was, or at least the first side. In fact I think that first side is easily the best thing he ever did. Very strong melodic writing. Fantastic phrasing with call and response lines tracing some really tasty chord loops. Instrumental story telling. I had to listen to again immediately afterwards. And then I listened to it again. And again. And again. And again. Hence I need to catch up.

I love this. The climax of the first side:



The second side is OK too but it's a build to bombastic synth thing, which is a bit meh.
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really like this exert.reminds me a lot of Orbital, Middle of Nowhere era in its chord changes...its better than them though, I wouldnt be surprised if they ripped it off a bit
 
ska invita said:
really like this exert.reminds me a lot of Orbital, Middle of Nowhere era in its chord changes...its better than them though, I wouldnt be surprised if they ripped it off a bit
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I would not of thought of Mike Oldfield-Orbital connection, but why not?
 
ska invita said:
really like this exert.reminds me a lot of Orbital, Middle of Nowhere era in its chord changes...its better than them though, I wouldnt be surprised if they ripped it off a bit
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Iirc, from interviews at the time, Orbital, The Orb and others in the dance/ambient scene were name checking the likes of Oldfield, Tangerine Dream and Steve Hillage...
 
isvicthere? said:
I remember a letter to the NME at the time, complaining that the cover of this album was "two tarts playing with themselves." Being quite naive then, I wasn´t entirely sure what it meant.
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When I was working in the States I took advantage of buying the USA version of Country Life with the censored cover to sell back in the UK

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Magma and related roundup. I'll put a Spotify list together for these and similar.

A second amazing year for Christian Vander/Magma. First there’s this solo album that’s really a Magma album for a soundtrack to a very odd film of Tristan & Iseult (I think there are or used to be clips of it on youtube) that’s really Wurdah Itah or the second movement of the Theusz Hamtaak trilogy, the previous year’s Mekanïk Destruktïẁ Kommandöh being the third part (he wrote them in reverse order). Keep up at the back. Jagged, operatic Wagner/Orf/Stravinsky fascistic jazz-funk-rock. For anybody but the masses.

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In a fit of paranoia Vander thought Mike Oldfield had copied Mekanïk Destruktïẁ Kommandöh to make Tubular Bells and then dastardly used it in the Exorcist, and that’s just not the vibe it’s supposed to be!!! So he came up with a completely different style with a slow build up over a repeated three note motif. Köhntarkösz. It’s kind of impressive. It’s probably all about Hitler though.

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Magma and altogether more savoury spin off Zao released their second album Osiris, which moves the Zeuhl sound closer to more standard jazz-rock, albeit a particularly fast and furious jazz-rock.

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Canterbury roundup

First off we have to talk about the new post-Caravan, post Matching Mole, post Egg, post Gong band Hatfield and the North. The first of their two studio albums. I think they took the Canterbury sound to a more sophisticated breezy jazzy height although they’re not afraid to rock out either. Fronted by Richard Sinclair of Caravan, it’s continuity Caravan in my mind. Also they might just have my favourite band name. Also excellent album cover.

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And then there’s Robert Wyatt’s masterpiece Rock Bottom. After an accident he was left paralyzed from waste down and among other things couldn’t tour and decided on a solo career. This is a long, very strange and peculiarly aquatic apology to his wife Alfred Benge.

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Kevin Ayers formed a new band and developed a more commercial psychy rock/pop sound. Not really Canterbury anymore, but worth a listen. The Confessions of Doctor Dream.

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And that’s strictly speaking about it. There’s also Egg and Isotope and RYM list Cos and Gong as canterbury. I think I’ll deal with them separately. The Cos and the Egg are two underrated IMO gems and really their own things.
 
1974 brought us the two examples of a rare genre, what might be called chamber rock. Jazz/rock with classical/baroque sensibilities.

I've written about Henry Cow's Unrest already here. I could possibly describe this as a bit like some of Frank Zappa's compositions with a nod to Canterbury. But that doesn't get into the studio improvisations of second side...

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And then there's a briefly reformed Egg with their final album The Civil Surface. Band leader and writer Mont Campbell was trying to get into the world of classical composition and this made for a very studious record. Lots of odd rhythms and spidery melodies, and some bold silences. Lots of humour to it as well. But it's a long way from their high octane previous releases. There's a couple of wind quartets and Steve Hillage and a couple of Henry Cow member guest. Exceptional and unique.

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First of those amazing 1970's Virgin label Ivor Cutler albums. Lots and lots of very short little bits. Railway Sleepers is about the closest he got poetry (he hated poetry).

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But it's mostly this sort of magnificance.



Or this

 
andysays said:
That was their first album after Eno left; not as good as the first two, IMO.

Speaking of Eno, he had a couple of albums out himself this year
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Yep, looking up albums from that year I didn't realise Eno had left Roxy Music at first, I thought he'd just had a really busy 1974 making three different albums.
The39thStep said:
Along with Ian Asbury and Iggy. There must be some merit in a thread of artists that were rumoured to have been asked to have replaced key members in bands. I'd have loved to have heard him have a go at LA Woman
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Does everyone know the story of Richard Branson flying Devo out to Jamaica to try and convince them to let John Lydon join?
 
Cos were another act who are very difficult to categorise. Belgium band, who included Marc Hollander. A little bit like the first Lard Free album. A little bit like Henry Cow. A little bit like Mad Curry. Jazz-rockish with lots of reeds. Very colourful and fronted by singer Pascale Son who sang/scat wonderfully on this one. Ridiculous album name Postaeolian Train Robbery. Ridiculous all over. I love it dearly.

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