Goldmine's obituary on Simon House.

I want to bring to your attention a very good and touching obituary about Simon House published in the last hours on the Web.

It was written by journalist Dave Thompson for Goldmine and it is available here: 

https://www.goldminemag.com/obituaries-news/simon-house-born-august-29-1948-died-may-25-2025

Thompson writes: "Depending upon which side of the rock spectrum you stand, Simon House's name usually invokes one of two memories — the majesty with which he has graced some of the greatest Hawkwind albums, or the haunting violin which dominated his time with David Bowie.

But House's own career reaches way beyond either of those two highs. As a prodigiously gifted teen, he was a member of High Tide, one of the most creative, if sadly unsung, bands to emerge from the post-psychedelic Sixties."

Hawkwind, May 1974. Left to right: keyboard player Simon House, guitarist Dave Brock, keyboard player Del Dettmar, bassist Lemmy, drummer Simon King and saxophonist Nik Turner. 

Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images

"He was thus present at the birth of Hawkwind — staged on House’s twenty-first birthday, Group X’s All Saints Church Hall show saw them opening for High Tide (The two bands would also share the same management company, Clearwater Productions)."

After summarising House's long, glorious musical career, Thompson concludes the piece by quoting the words of Brian Perera, whose Cleopatra Records released several of House’s later recordings:

"It’s with heavy hearts that we say goodbye to our dear friend and brilliant collaborator. Simon wasn’t just a musician — he was a sonic architect who helped shape the sound of a generation.

He shared the stage with legends: David Bowie, Lemmy-era Hawkwind, and Nik Turner, always leaving his unmistakable mark. From the art-rock brilliance of Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging” era to the boundary-pushing tours with Nik and Cleopatra in the ’90s, Simon’s electrifying violin and cosmic keyboard work lifted every track, every show, every moment.

His vision brought depth, texture, and soul — he simply made everything better.

We miss you deeply, Simon.

Rest easy, my friend. Your sound lives on."

no©2025LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first).

Dave Thompson's review of "Mosaics" on "Goldmine".

 

Contributing editor at "Goldmine" and "Spin Cycle" vinyl column, a much published author (he co-wrote recent (and upcoming) autobiographies by Eddie and Brian Holland, New York Doll Sylvain Sylvain and Walter Lure of Johnny Thunder’s Heartbreaker), DAVE THOMPSON writes this good review on "GOLDMINE - The Music Collector's Magazine" web site.

 

"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, Mosaics is a slimmed down version of the deluxe editions that appeared a few years back; it contains just the three basic albums (1969’s Alchemy, 1970’s Third Ear Band and 1972’s Music from MacBeth), without any of the bonus material, BBC sessions and out-takes, that accompanied them the last time around.

It’s a fascinating journey regardless; the first two albums in particular hang so far outside anything remotely approaching even the underground mainstream of the era that the most common description for them is “challenging.”

Nevertheless, the band’s haunting oboe/cello/violin/hand drum-led improv (more-or-less) transports you to places best described as the ultimate destination for everything that was happening musically at the end of the sixties. Flavoured with a vision that refuses point-blank to sit comfortably among your expectations."

 

(original page here)

 no©2021 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first).

Goldmine reviews "Alchemy" remastered edition.

 

After his very good review on "Elements 1970-1971" (read here), Dave Thompson reviews also "Alchemy" on "Goldmine". 

Here's his writing:


Dave Thompson
March 21, 2019
 
"Continuing the long- awaited exhumation of the Third Ear vault, but moving backwards in time from last time out’s Elements, this was their 1969 debut album – the one that hit the music press with such force that it’s still hard to believe we’re talking about a barely-remembered cult. In certain circles, they should have been enormous, as Melody Maker’s review made plain. “The three-eared men are a Godsend for lovers of mysticism, Stonehenge and the cosmic force lines. Absorbing, almost hypnotic… [and] 90 per cent improvisation.”

What more could one ask for?

As before, the original album is expanded to encompass all of the band’s doings around the time it was recorded – there’s a Peel session that includes a celebration of the group’s biggest gig so far, opening for the Stones at the Hyde Park free concert, and no less than eight unreleased studio tracks.
These in themselves are worth the purchase price. We begin with a 1968 session with producer Ron Geesin, destined for an album of library music a couple of years later (they appear under the name of the National Balkan Ensemble). Next up is a couple of songs taped early on in the sessions for Alchemy, on the eve of one of the band’s regular personnel shifts; and, finally, the first steps towards its follow up are here, including another version of “Hyde Park Raga.” Although this being the Third Ear Band, the title is the most familiar part of it. 

In truth, the Third Ear Band are an acquired taste, a time-and-place-y experience that can demand more attention than a lot of ears are willing to give. The eastern elements certainly overwhelm anything that can even be loosely described as rock, and a good case can be made for expunging them from pop history altogether, and planting them instead within the realms of modern classical. Or, maybe, even folk. Sharp-eyed connoisseurs will spot them lurking within the Strangers in the Room collection mentioned above.

That, however, would be to deny the impact that they did make on the age. The Stones gig, after all, was just one of the festivals they played; they were also on the bill at the Isle of Wight that same summer, a few names down from the headlining Dylan. They shared management with Tyrannousaurus Rex (with whom they also gigged), Roy Harper and the Edgar Broughton Band; and a label with Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and Barclay James Harvest. They haunted the same arts labs that David Bowie frequented; and though they drew little influence from their stablemates, the same thing cannot always be said the other way around. There’s a lot to listen out for in Alchemy, then, and a lot of great music as well."

(Read the digital version here. Thanks to Dave Thompson for warning me about it)

no©2019 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Dave Thompson reviews "Elements 1970-1971" on "Goldmine" magazine.

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."

no©2019 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)