The info: Following the release by Esoteric of “Egg” on CD some time ago, a new remastered vinyl edition can now be preordered, restoring the track ‘Symphony No. 2 – Third Movement’ (as did the CD), which was withdrawn from the original release due to the piece borrowing from themes by Igor Stravinsky. The album has been cut at Abbey Roadstudios and fully restores the original LP artwork.
The review: Much has been written about Egg’s debut album on Decca’s budget progressive rock label, Deram Nova and I well remember taking a chance on this one in my student days. I’ve stuck with it, and indeed all of Egg’s music, since it sounds as relevant today as it did way back then. ‘While Growing My Hair’ might be corny to some but it is a sentiment of its age and gives an early impression of a precocious and prodigious musical talent. ‘I Will Be Absorbed’ still stands up well as an intensely introspective piece of jazz rock while ‘Fugue in D Minor’ is an adaptation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous piece later to be sampled by experimentalists Add ‘N’ To ‘X’. ‘The Song of McGillicudie the Pusillanimous’ (etc.) was seemingly influenced by The Nice and is in 5/8 and has a theme that would be later developed on ‘Contrasong’, with its 5/8 and 9/8 time signatures and brass section. One of the short experimental pieces ‘Boilk’ would be also be expanded upon in Egg’s second album as well as ‘Symphony No.2’ which would find a resonance in ‘Long Piece #3’ on “The Polite Force”.
Both ‘suites’ are notable in their own way with quotations from popular classical music, notably Grieg’s ‘In the Hall of the Mountain King’ and Holst’s “The Planets Suite”. Bartok and Stravinsky are other composers that influenced Egg’s music as well as ‘avant garde’ composers such as Stockhausen, as evidenced by the amazing sound collage of ‘Blane’ (whose later equivalent was the second ‘Boilk’), on which Dave Stewart experiments with a tone generator. The album goes out as it comes in with a demonstration of brilliant musicianship in the succinct solos by the formidable Mont Campbell on bass and Clive Brooks on drums in the ‘Fourth Movement’.
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