Blair 1523

Blair 1523 only released an EP (Blair1523) in its lifetime on a small English label Wilde Club Records; thankfully Spacemen 3/Spectrum mainman Sonic Boom heard it and was able to arrange for the release of the Beautiful Debris lp some time later. Compiling both the EP and unreleased tracks, it makes a solid case for Blair 1523 as underrated modern psych gods, mixing a fun kick-up-your-heels rave-up sense — "Swell" is particularly great on this level — with some drone feedback zone-outs to good effect.

Blair 1523 only released an EP (Blair1523) in its lifetime on a small English label Wilde Club Records; thankfully Spacemen 3/Spectrum mainman Sonic Boom heard it and was able to arrange for the release of the Beautiful Debris lp some time later. Compiling both the EP and unreleased tracks, it makes a solid case for Blair 1523 as underrated modern psych gods, mixing a fun kick-up-your-heels rave-up sense — "Swell" is particularly great on this level — with some drone feedback zone-outs to good effect. Lead singer Alan Duke has a fairly understated voice, but no more so than, say, Ian Brown and Tim Burgess, and unlike those others, Duke avoids whine in favor of pleasant wistfulness. The other key member of the sextet was Andrew Jenkins, whose organ work fills out the songs perfectly, and on songs like "On the Rise," which tackles Madchester neo-psych and beats most of its more well-known practitioners at its own game. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL..