To those of us who are too young to remember them, it kinda feels like the 70s didn’t actually happen, like they were something that Rick Wakeman invented while he was in the pub nursing a pint of John Smith’s and absent-mindedly writing rude words in the Sun’s two-speed crossword.  But, apparently, top scientists have proved that they did in fact happen, probably by carbon dating Damo Suzuki or something, and, after the verdict in ELP v mapsadaisical (2005 SLT 499 per Lord Clarke: “I am bound…to find that the absence of the particulars in question from the very detailed Note, 6/9 of process, rendered it ineffective as preventing the adjudicator’s decision becoming final and binding in terms of Clause 66”.  Ouch, that stung) I’m not allowed to question that fact in print any more.

White Rainbow is sometime Fucker of Jackie O’s Mother Adam Forkner, and in the ludicrously-titled Prism Of Eternal Now (I can imagine Julian Cope nodding in approval) he has extracted the DNA of various long-dead 70s prog/kraut/space rock bands and bolted on to some more modern-sounding drones and electronics to create a remarkable musical Frankenstein.    Just take a look at the instruments listed on the back of this: “Phasers, guitars, synthesizers, delay devices, voices, filters, tablas, water jug, hands, breath, time, fuzzes, harmonizers, octave generators, pitch shifters, shakers, chimes, gongs, looping devices, computers etc”.  Don’t you just love the “etc” on the end?  The first side - OK, OK, it is a CD, but it feels like an LP -  has the Tangerine Dream guitars of “For Terry”, and the Can-like percussive propulsion on the peerless “Mystic Prism” (which also seems distantly related to Human League’s “Being Boiled”).  The second side features the languid SOTL/Labradfordisms of “April 25th 11.14pm” and “Waves”, but also the glitchy “Warm Clicked Fruit” which somehow manages to sound exactly like its title. 

The excellent Prism of Eternal Now is available now from Kranky; in fact it has probably been available there for at least 30 years. 

:: :: ::