Splore, Backscattering

 Splore, Backscattering (Blue Matter)

The last time I listened to a 25-minute rock track it was circa 1973. How time flies. In the meantime, the 3 minutes or so it takes Miss Ross to implore her errant boyfriend to Stop! in the Name of Love has been enough. 

Splore is multi-instrumentalist, Nick Saloman, making full use of all his instruments and the studio, with Dave Palmer and guest friends. Instrumentation that includes Electric Dulcimer, Baby Sitar, Mellotron, Theremin and Harpsichord signposts us to the fact that it's Prog, Man. Il Pirata makes one wonder if this is what Tonto's Expanding Head Band would be doing by now if they had been any good.

While the effect gives the impression of abundance and plenty, it can also suggest excess. One wonders if some of it is necessary, and included because it's an available resource. Motown productions, even at their most expansive, remained economical while here it's in danger of getting mighty crowded.

Kevin John Rogers recites The Beaver with a sense of dark other-worldliness before the elegant Knot Garden has hints of Renaissance music. Saloman is a fine musician and the production job can be admired in its own right but the guests are welcome in breaking up the ongoing exhibition of technical prowess. Keyboard parts and studio effects make that which could have stuck at baroque or been pared down to classical into something rococo. 

Debbie Wiseman singing on You are the Light is classy and, for a pop fan like me, Louis Wiggett on Come Home Melody Moon is the absolute standout that I'm sure would have achieved high placings in the hit parade of 1967 had it been released then, a stylish retro piece that Tony Blackburn could play on Sounds of the Sixties if only it had arrived more than 55 years earlier.

Kevin is back on the title track, intoning jazz references in his evocative, attitudinal way before the full potential of the Saloman aesthetic is unleashed. It is to be admired, for sure, and is clearly brilliant at what it's doing while for me it was a bit like watching expert players play Bridge. I appreciate I'm witnessing something being done exceptionally well but not in a position to appreciate it. I wonder why it needs to be done while being impressed nonetheless.

I'm impressed that the audience for such music remained faithful to their creed and still provide a market for it after I came and went in fairly short order at an early enough age before acquiring an Al Green album and making my way from there. I'm impressed by the commitment and technique still being put into a genre that I'd thought was as long gone as skiffle but no genre is ever entirely over. I'll be playing Come Home Melody Moon plenty more times. I'll go back to Il Pirata and I'll listen to Kev's bits again but I'm not sure how many times I'll have 25 minutes to spare and think they will be best spent with the rest of Backscattering, brilliant title though it is. If anybody is going to fill in such of my time with their labyrynthine excursions, it'll be Bach.