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Fresh Maggots - Fresh Maggots CD (album) cover

FRESH MAGGOTS

Fresh Maggots

 

Prog Folk

3.81 | 33 ratings

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Sean Trane
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk
4 stars This rare psych-acid-folk-prog disc is full of surprises, as this duo is almost as unknown as another English duo, Jan Dukes De Grey. Outside both being duos, their first albums are actually fairly similar in sound and spirit. Both filled with pastoral hippy acoustic tunes bordering on the traditional folk, a few psych twists (like a fuzzed out electric guitar in FM) with some added orchestrations, but nothing overpowering that what would ruin the essence of the music.

There are some incredibly beautiful moments on here such as the delicate (almost Pentangle-like due to the glockenspiel and superb cello lines) Rosemary Hill, the short self-explanatory Quickie, the happy When She Laughs (with its piccolo), the haunting Spring (added strings to the end of the song), the dreary-spirited Who's To Die (here the strings are very present, but to good effects) and the instrumental Elizabeth R. But clearly the rockier fuzz guitar mixed with some medieval folky guitar lines are the attraction of the album (Dole Song, Everybody's Gone To War, Balloon Song, and the demented lengthy Frustration) and this is precisely this electric trait that created the legend around this album, even if the fuzzy tracks are the minority on the disc. The bonus tracks come from a non-album single of the same year, and they both fit quite well with the spirit of the album. As an added bonus tracks to the original album are included the two son-album single tracks: obviously, they could have had a massive hit with the A-side Car Song (almost a sing-along) while What Would You Do is meddling well with the rest of the tracks. While not as incredibly tenacious in your mind as Tea and Symphony's Asylum or JDDG's Loft album, this is an incredibly pure artefact from those ideally pure hippy years, much like JDDG's Sorcerers album.

For a long time FM's album was hard to get, even in the counterfeit market, but recently the semi-legit Radoactive label and the fully-legit Sunbeam Records have released their own version, the later coming with an added bunch of Radio Luxembourg Broadcast tracks (with short explanations between), all of which one figure originally on the vinyl. So while the extra bonus tracks are not essential additions - not excellent sound quality, although they represent a fairly different facet of the duo)- you might as well get the full legit version, especially that it comes with an extended booklet. A real must-hear for those folkie progheads.

Sean Trane | 4/5 |

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