Radar Favourites - Radar Favourites
SKU
05-Reel Recordings 017
Great to finally be able to hear one of the great lost 1970s groups that everyone who follows this sort of thing had heard of (see who is on this below) but that no one had ever atually heard. With any luck, maybe someday I'll get to hear "Dolphin Logic" (pre-This Heat) or "Sunship" (with Alan Gowen and Allan Holdsworth) too.
"Radar Favourites was formed in the summer of 1974 by saxophonist/flautist Geoff Leigh, after making Henry Cow’s Legend album the undisputed classic it is. Geoff & his lady, keyboardist/singer Cathy Williams, teamed with electric guitarist Gerry Fitz-Gerald (Mouseproof), bass guitarist Jack Monck (Delivery and Stars), and drummer Charles Hayward (Quiet Sun). This quintet drew upon their disparate playing experiences to inject fresh oxygen into the then increasingly bloated body of British Rock. Theirs was not a regular music, but one that repositioned the markers on the rarified field of experimental rock. By year’s end Radar Favourites had completed two studio tracks and gave just four concerts, before shifting personnel and eventually disbanding under industry indifference. This historical CD release presents the original Radar Favourites, carefully remastered from the reels extant. At last we can experience the bands sublime studio recordings, an untethered private session and a forceful concert excerpt recorded at London’s College of Printing, in a specially designed cover by Hawkwind’s graphic artist, the legendary Barney Bubbles. Seldom has an ostensible rock group scoped such prescient musical terrain; free collective improvisations, dynamic tension and release within interweaving layers, and dramatic trans-dimensional song structure. Without reservation, Reel Recordings recommends the music of Radar Favourites as a never less than exhilarating revelation. File under essential!
"This is a recording very much of its time, eloquent of a musical climate and style that has long vanished, almost without trace." - Chris Cutler