MICE AND RATS IN THE LOFT

A fantastic album of the acid folk genre and one that manages to be quite progressive, as well as quite unique. The music here is mostly tangential in its orchestration and feels free-flowing. Jan Dukes de Grey have masterfully combined folk, progressive rock, psychedelic rock and elements of jazz. As opposed to their previous and only other album 'Sorcerers', drums play throughout the album. The instrumentation and songwriting are much more progressive on this album. The music travels through many different stages, being wonderfully exploratory, and contains many instrumental segues and sections or passages. The sound is usually rough-sounding (in the guitar sound/style and more minimal drum/percussion parts) but very well played and openly orchestrated. The music sounded to me at first as open as there usually aren't too many instruments playing at the same time, but boy what it lacks in full orchestration (it actually sounds really good this way!) it makes up for in quality and quantity of great musical ideas, as well as in the very enthusiastic, energetic sound. Amazing, the original duo (Derek Noy and Michael Bairstow) played I think this entire album minus the drums (played by Denis Conlan) and the symphonic instruments in most of the latter portion of the side long (18:58) "Sun Symphonica"! I'm stunned that they wrote this too! The music There is so much here to digest! Took me at least 4 listens through the album (more than for 'First Utterance' by Comus) before I could really understand and begin to develop a liking to this record. I've had this one for a little over a year, managed to listen to it enough right at the start fortunately, as I expected it to be quite good. I group this loosely with Comus and Spirogyra, all though each of the three are unique in their eccentric character. Great for sunny spring or fall days around nature while on a trip of the acidic variety, but always very enjoyable. This is one of those albums that really significantly changed my musical world.

Highly recommended but do give it at least a few listens!

5 stars