File under: Machine molles who grow plump in the night
Well, it was another horrid year for man and nature alike, including some rough seas in the lives of some friends here at PE. And as the wicked bells of time toll relentlessly this New Year's Eve, I dash into the outstretched arms of music for comfort... and comfort it brings.
(There's also a lot of wine at the ready, but that's neither here nor there.)
So welcome, all ye faithful, to Canterbury Binge 2022. Allow the wonders of this treasured genre to blanket and settle around you like quietly falling midnight snow, bringing calm and restoring order. Here endeth the engorged insanity of The Holidays (as well as the dizzying pinballing between numerous musical 'phases', if you're anything like I am). As I believe the poet John Keats once said: 'Time to get all Kentish up in this bitch'.
We begin this new dawn with Messrs. Gowen, Miller, Sinclair, & Tomkins delivering the title track to their brilliant 1981 platter, recorded shortly before Alan Gowen unfairly departed us at a frightfully young age. As with all such losses, one ponders what might have been in the decades since. This album is no stranger to the Canterbury discussions here and a handful of other places, but in the wider world remains a bit of a lost gem. I chose this piece because it seems to reflect the ominous gloom many of us have felt over the last two years balanced with faint wisps of cautious hope. It's a track of stunning beauty to my ears.
Happy new year to all of you. I enjoy you.
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