Description
Label Review.
1970 album.
Our Overview.
Magnificent lost psychedelic LP from 1970. When Record Collector launched their Rare Record Club back on 2009, it was due to their partnership with Secret records, who amongst other things owned The Morgan Blue Town back catalogue that they decided they had to get this pressed back onto vinyl again. Released on the Morgan Blue Town label in 1970 the album hardly sold any copies at all and it is only over time that it has been hailed as a lost classic.
Bobak Jons Malone; their sole album ‘Motherlight’ emerged in 1969 and promptly disappeared again, leaving another generation to discover its idiosyncratic charms. The genesis of the ‘Motherlight’ album can be traced back to the mid-60s. Monty Babson, an old-fashioned crooner who'd been recording as a solo act since the 1950s, hod crossed over to the other side of the fence: establishing his own publishing company, Morgan Music.
By the summer of 1967 Babson was working with on outfit called Orange Bicycle, whose mainman was Wilson Malone - a multi-instrumentalist who could write, sing, produce and arrange with equal dexterity. Malone's emergence as a creative force coincided with Babson's desire to set up his own autonomous little empire, and by early 1968 he had founded the Morgan Sound Recording Studios. Surrounding himself with familiar faces.
'Motherlight' duly emerged in the summer of 1969, but without a band to promote it, the Morgan sales team were facing an uphill struggle. The album came and went: Wil Malone continued to involve himself with Morgan and Orange Bicycle, recording a solo album for Fontana in 1970 before becoming on integral part of late period Smoke. After orchestrating the Who's Tommy in the mid-70s, he has enjoyed more sustained success over the last few years as the highly-respected producer/arranger of such acts as Iron Maiden, Simple Minds, Massive Attack and the Verve. Mike Bobak, meanwhile, continued to work at Morgan, though he was briefly sacked by Monty Babson after one of his charges, Quintessence, set fire to a studio piano!
As Record Collector reviewed: “There is a delicious fuzzy ethereal feel to the entire album from Malone’s laid back lead vocals to a mastery of the possibilities of the recording studio. The songs are crackers as well: Mona Lose sounding like the Kinks on valium whereas The Lens blasts towards an acid drenched shore complete with the sort of lyrics –“fishermen are casting a net to hold my mind” – that Syd Barrett would have been proud of. In fact, on the subject of Syd there are some wonderful guitar solos on the LP played, it is believed, by Boback that range from the searing to the sublime. Malone’s skills as a pliant arranger are wonderfully showcased on the almost suite-like House Of Many Windows which at one point has a wonderful harpsichord/piano/organ interlude. At the other end of the scale Johns Chant starts off like a Monty Python sketch with a spoken word segment before moving into a piano driven mantra. Burning The Weed is an ambiguous title that contain possible lyrical drug puns – “never felt so funny burning the week” and “sweeter than honey burning the weed” – although the thrust of the song is about burning weeds in a garden. The album ends with a sound collage that reprises all of the tracks on the LP.
Faithful recreation of the original LP's gorgeous textured sleeve