Excellent journalist Dave Thompson reviews TEB's "Elements 1970-1971" album on "Goldmine" (the Music Collector's magazine) at https://www.goldminemag.com/blogs/spin-cycle-blogs/reviews-third-ear-band-curved-air-bay-city-rollers-the-bordellos-unicorn-bananarama-underground-freaks-rock-art-sex-clark-five
Here's the verdict:
Dave Thompson
January 11th, 2019
"If you don’t know the Third Ear band, stop reading and look them up on Youtube. We’ll see you back here in about thirty minutes. If, on the other hand, you do know their music… and have been waiting for a CD package that comes close to the quality of your original vinyl… this is what you’ve been looking for.
Effectively, Elements is a deluxe edition of the group’s self-titled second album, four songs named for the elements of earth, air, fire and water. Except “songs” is not a word that hangs easily over the group’s oeuvre, as forty minutes of haunting oboe/cello/violin/hand drum-led improv (more-or-less) transports you to places that even the more outre prog rock rarely venture.
They’ve been described as “challenging,” but that’s not strictly true. Rather, the Third Ear Band was the ultimate destination of a lot of what was going on musically at the end of the sixties, only armed with a vision that refused point-blank to sit comfortably among your expectations. Hence, as this package makes clear, a somewhat dishevelled recording career.
Disc one is the original album, a couple of out-takes, and three BBC session recordings. (More, from a BBC concert broadcast, conclude disc three). Disc two, however, places the group in what might well have been their most natural environment, and their soundtrack to the German TV drama Abelard and Heloise. A medieval romance decorated with the mindbending art of Herbert Fuchs, it provided an exquisite setting for the band’s musical inclinations and, taken, for the first time, from the original master tapes, the music sounds amazing.
There’s more unreleased material spreading across the remainder discs two and three, as sessions for the group’s ultimately scrapped third album are unearthed for the first time. The original line-up had splintered just months before the recordings began, and the new look TEB was perhaps still finding its feet. But what was to be titled The Dragon Wakes nevertheless ushered in a brand new electric era… a preface to their so majestic soundtrack for Polanski’s MacBeth… and it’s great to finally hear it here.
The Third Ear Band was never going to be toppermost of the poppermost; was never going to ascend to the highest echelons of even left field prog success. Peter Mew, who engineered Third Ear Band, described the sessions as the “weirdest” he had ever been involved with; journalist Richard Williams mused, “what they have to do with pop music, I don’t know.” But while they flourished, the Third Ear Band had no peers, and took no prisoners. Elements, which one hopes is simply the first shot in a wholesale reissue package, is a terrific place to start (re-) acquaint ing yourself."
Effectively, Elements is a deluxe edition of the group’s self-titled second album, four songs named for the elements of earth, air, fire and water. Except “songs” is not a word that hangs easily over the group’s oeuvre, as forty minutes of haunting oboe/cello/violin/hand drum-led improv (more-or-less) transports you to places that even the more outre prog rock rarely venture.
They’ve been described as “challenging,” but that’s not strictly true. Rather, the Third Ear Band was the ultimate destination of a lot of what was going on musically at the end of the sixties, only armed with a vision that refused point-blank to sit comfortably among your expectations. Hence, as this package makes clear, a somewhat dishevelled recording career.
Disc one is the original album, a couple of out-takes, and three BBC session recordings. (More, from a BBC concert broadcast, conclude disc three). Disc two, however, places the group in what might well have been their most natural environment, and their soundtrack to the German TV drama Abelard and Heloise. A medieval romance decorated with the mindbending art of Herbert Fuchs, it provided an exquisite setting for the band’s musical inclinations and, taken, for the first time, from the original master tapes, the music sounds amazing.
There’s more unreleased material spreading across the remainder discs two and three, as sessions for the group’s ultimately scrapped third album are unearthed for the first time. The original line-up had splintered just months before the recordings began, and the new look TEB was perhaps still finding its feet. But what was to be titled The Dragon Wakes nevertheless ushered in a brand new electric era… a preface to their so majestic soundtrack for Polanski’s MacBeth… and it’s great to finally hear it here.
The Third Ear Band was never going to be toppermost of the poppermost; was never going to ascend to the highest echelons of even left field prog success. Peter Mew, who engineered Third Ear Band, described the sessions as the “weirdest” he had ever been involved with; journalist Richard Williams mused, “what they have to do with pop music, I don’t know.” But while they flourished, the Third Ear Band had no peers, and took no prisoners. Elements, which one hopes is simply the first shot in a wholesale reissue package, is a terrific place to start (re-) acquaint ing yourself."
no©2019 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
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