Quatermass
Album: Quatermass (Deluxe Edition)
Label: Esoteric
Tracks: 14
Website: http://www.esotericrecordings.com

Quatermass is one of those special albums from the early days of EMI's prog label Harvest, but even now it's probably best remembered for its tremendous, eye-catching cover design whose weird alien perspectives were genuinely unsettling in depicting the intersection of two different worlds and time-zones. In truth, much of the music within was no less stunning, but in this instance (unlike many Harvest label LPs) I'm not sure the sleeve quite reflected the musical content, except perhaps in that the latter was a hitherto unknown hybrid-cum-meeting-point. Ready cash was scarce at the time the album originally came out, and there were so many enticing records to choose from, so one simply couldn't afford to take too many risks. In this case, many fans tempted by the sleeve who gave the disc a tentative spin in the shop would like me have found the early stages of the record a touch disappointing so didn't persevere, putting it aside for the time being in search of more consistent and/or immediate and/or challenging fare. The chance to reappraise the album now, in this lavishly packaged new reissue from Esoteric, is however to be welcomed, for a full-stretch playthrough proves essential to appreciation. Musical unevenness notwithstanding, hindsight brings revelations, and I arrive at the conclusion that maybe even the nascent prog-rock world wasn't quite ready for the complex though slightly haphazard, not always thought-out mix (encompassing hard rock, jazz and bluesy inflections with classical touches) that Quatermass were tentatively peddling. Despite good critical feedback and successful touring, the band lasted barely two years, leaving behind a recorded legacy of just this album and a single (which was released only in Germany), and broke up in the spring of 1971.

That eponymous album came out in May 1970, some months before the release of key prog LPs like ELP's debut (to which I sometimes hear correspondences); the closest comparison it might evoke would be early Deep Purple, with hints of Procol Harum and the more playful, experimental or jazzy side of the Canterbury bands. The Purple connection, of course, reaches back further, since all three members of Quatermass (keyboardist Peter Robinson, bassist John Gustafson and drummer Mick Underwood) originally played in Episode Six with Ian Gillan and Roger Glover, who then left that band for Purple pastures. Quatermass only made the one album, and while it proves full of promise and contains loads of ideas one feels that these aren't quite worked-through, and as a result it doesn't really hang together, being a disparate and sometimes confusing mix or clash of styles (often within the same track) where the juxtaposition of discords and passages of deliberate dissonance with highly melodic invention doesn't ideally convince. Like most albums of the era, however, it has its moments - and a fairly distinctive character that derives largely from Robinson's superlative Hammond organ playing (though not to underplay the virtues of the rhythm section boys, or the strength of Gustafson's vocal contributions).

Highlights of the LP for me have always been the epic, albeit episodic closer Laughin' Tackle (which embraces both a gorgeous classically-inspired string arrangement and the then-obligatory drum solo), the dynamic (if brief) keyboard-rich Make Up Your Mind, the portentous clavinet adventure What Was That?? and the aggressively funky Up On The Ground, whereas the baroque harpsichord balladry of Good Lord Knows seems to belong to another band entirely, the lengthy bluesy workout Post War Saturday Echo rambles on unfocused and Black Sheep Of The Family (later covered by Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow) just amounts to a fairly mundane rock number.

This latest reissue from Esoteric also usefully gives us both sides of the single in addition to the album, and supersedes the earlier (1996) Repertoire-label re-release, firstly in its appending of a DVD containing 5.1 Surround Sound mixes of the album tracks and secondly in its inclusion of two previously unreleased bonus tracks (a 1970 rehearsal take and a 1974 live recording from a gig with Shawn Phillips, with whom the guys were touring at the time). Interesting new track notes from Robinson himself add to the value of this well-presented reissue.

David Kidman