Bevis Frond "Miasma" 1986***

Bands formed in 1968 include Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Yes, Black Sabbath, King Crimson and Rush. Yet, for some obsessives (can't be more than a dozen, but they exist) 1968 will forever be the year that 15-year old Nick Saloman founded his first band, The Bevis Frond Museum. Imagine him, a chubby kid in his London bedroom, trying out different sounds with his guitar. Picture a news reel playing on the wall to indicate the passing of time: Woodstock, The Beatles break up, Watergate, The Vietnam War ends, Ziggy Stardast and glam rock, disco, punk, MTV, Thatcher and Reagan, the war in the Falklands, Mikhael Gorbachev elected as the last leader of the USSR...then the movie ends abruptly with a nasty motorcycle accident. Only this is not the end, this is the beginning. Saloman uses the compensation he gets for his accident to buy a 4-track studio and, while recuperating, records an album at his home where he plays all instruments himself. It is "Miasma", the first ever Bevis Frond album after all these years. An incredible 30 or so albums would follow in as many years, establishing Saloman as a cult figure of the English alternative/neo-psychedelic scene. His songwriting combines a reverence for Jimi Hendrix and Arthur Lee with the very English psych sounds of The Blossom Toes, Syd Barret and Tomorrow. On the other hand his excessive use of feedback and multi-tracked distorted guitars, especially in his early albums, poses him as the missing link between Sonic Youth, The Wipers, Dinosaur Jr and the shoegaze generation. This overload of distorted electric guitar is all you notice at first, but Saloman is also an expressive singer and fine classic rock songwriter with a knack for melody. This first album alternates guitar freakouts with concrete songs and curious snippets ranging from the noisy "Garden Gate " and "Wild Afterthought" to the Elisabethan folk of "The Earl of Walthanstowe". My own favourites are the songs where the melting psychedelic guitar is combined with groovy 60's keyboards as in "Ride the Train of Thought" and "She's in Love With Time". "Wild Mind" and "The Newgate Wind" could have been The Stooges and Neil Young respectively, if they weren't buried under a lo-fi mountain of guitar noise. On the other hand "Splendid Isolation" is a sunny slice of power pop that could have been a 90's Lemonheads indie hit and "Maybe" a driving garage rocker while "Confusion Days" used to end the original LP with another burst of fuzz and distortion.

This CD version, however, is augmented by a smattering of tracks from the double album "Bevis Through the Looking Glass" a collection of previously unreleased home recordings predating "Miasma". These are of marginal interest e.g. "1970 Home Improvements" is 14 minutes of guitar noodling strewn together from different sessions while "Mudman" and "Now You Know" are similar but of inferior quality to his later stuff. At least "In Another Year" provides us with a welcome acoustic intermission and "Rat in a Waistcoat" with some nice Hendrix-style hard psych. All in all "Miasma" was an impressive, if belated, debut but Bevis (Or Saloman, the two are interchangable) had more in store for us. Retaining his edge, he toned down the noise and improved his songwriting, releasing album after album of high quality music to rival his psychedelic 60's idols. We'll be presenting some of them here...

**** for She's In Love With Time, Splendid Isolation, Maybe, Ride The Train Of Thought, In Another Year

*** for Wild Mind, The Earl Of Walthamstowe, The Newgate Wind, Confusion Days,Rat In A Waistcoat, Mudman, Now You Know  

** for Garden Gate, Wild After Thought, Release Yourself, 1970 Home Improvements