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Various Artists – Canterbury Tales - Nuggets From The Psychedelic Underground (2000)

Updated: Aug 13



A 3CD set of Canterbury Sound music for a fiver in the HMV sale? A quick look, and I don't have it all, so let's give it a go.


The reality is that it's a collection of out of copyright, or at least cheap to licence tracks, with nothing previously released on major labels, but that doesn't mean there aren't some diamonds in here.


So, what's here? Well, going through the big Canterbury names, no Hatfield And The North, Egg or Henry Cow - the one Caravan track is a poor quality live recording, and the one Soft Machine and couple of Gong, live cuts of dubious provenance, with a couple of National Health from their DS Al Coda album, a reunion for late keyboard player Alan Gowen. There are solo contributions from Jakko (a fringe player who later rose to prominence with King Crimson), Phil Manzanera (better known with Roxy Music, but a big mate of Robert Wyatt) Dave Sinclair, Robert Wyatt, Pip Pyle, and Brian & Hugh Hopper..

There's also early stuff from Wilde Flowers (a re-Caravan and Softs Canterbury band), Robert Wyatt collaborating with Jimi Hendrix (very early demos) and some bits from Daevid Allen's side project Magick Brothers.


So it's an interesting, although not comprehensive, listen. Some highlights:


CD1 - Magick Brothers' version of Wise Man In Your Heart, which Allen had previously done solo; Pip Pyle's Equipe Out's Jocelyn is a lovely jazz piece, as is Hugh Hopper's Band's Golden Section, while the couple of Wilde Flowers tracks are interesting historically, if of dubious quality.


CD2 opens with a previously unreleased and quite interesting version of Soft Machine's As Long As He Lies Perfectly Still, but there's not a huge amount on this disc. There's an adequate live Soft Machine doing Esther's Nose Job, and Pip Pyle's Equipe Out's Midnight Judo is restful jazz, with Elton Dean and Didier Malherbe on saxes. as is the Elton Dean offering, Zep-Tepi. Also, a blast of Gong's I Never Glid Before is always welcome.


CD3 stand outs include the Wyatt/Hendrix demo Slow Walkin' Talk, John Greaves' lovely song Kew Rhone (sung by Robert Wyatt), and once again, there's an interesting piece from Equipe Out, but there's not much else, until the final previously unreleased track, It's Flotsam And Jetsam Foreshore by Brian Hopper and Robert Fenner, an atmospheric ambient piece.


It's almost like this is a hastily cobbled together collection of low cost recordings to attract the gullible Canterbury obsessive, and it worked. Barely one third of the tracks have merited comment.



2* - it's not awful, but it's not a definitive collection of the genre.

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