AND IT CAME TO PASS

Finally we have Warm Dust creeping slowly into the Prog -archives.This great English band from early seventies released three official albums,with very little commercial success.My first encounter with this band was in mid-seventies,when I begin to explore less known prog acts.Although Warm Dust can't be considered clearly as straight prog,they developed sound similar to their contemporaries of the era,like Cressida,Affinity or even Greatest show on Earth,incorporating different styles colored heavily by wind instruments (saxes,flute,trumpets,even recorders).Their debut album " and It Came To Pass",released in 1970,was a brave foray into still uncharted waters of british prog world,being a double LPat the time when even biggest names in the genre did not dare to experiment wildly.Most prominent member known to wider audiences was Paul Carrack,keyboardist,who was going to be very successful during his stint with british popsters Squeeze in the eighties.Music on this massive double LP is very hard to categorise.There is a mix of long and shorter tracks and the sound has a very live and raw feel,with lots of room for instrumental interplay between saxes,flute and hammond organ.Dransfield Walker's muscular vocal drives the band literaly into frenzy during epics "Turbulence" and album's title song.There is strong jazz influence throughout,but also r'n'b overtones,mostly on shorter pieces.From today's perspective this album may sound dated to some prog purists,but underlaying fact is that this was one of the strongest debuts at the time of it's release. All three albums are reissued on CD by Red Fox records in 2001,with second and third(Peace for our time and Warm Dust)released as 2 on 1.Overall,very good effort from Warm Dust and highly recommended.Four stars.

Around the turn of 1969/70, the renowned Catacombs club in Wolverhampton, succeeded in attracting, in successive weeks, Free, Caravan, East of Eden and Quintessence, with Yes and Warm Dust not long after. A hugely impressive array of rock/prog bands, with, the obvious diversity of the music aside, each performance freshly memorable in its own way to my then-youthful mind: Free's Simon Kirke delivering a hugely energetic, rock-solid and sweat-laden peformance on drums; Caravan's four-man line-up being augmented by flute courtesy of a pre-recorded backing tape; East of Eden's Dave Arbus ending up playing one of his double-sax solos on the fire escape outside the building; Maha Dev fixing a broken guitar string during Quintessence's magical set-opener, Ganga Mai; Yes appearing so late in the evening that there was only time for me to hear three songs before I had to dash for the last bus....aah! memories are made of this. And then came Warm Dust.....

In my view, WD - ( did they come from Burnley?) - more than held their own amongst their illustrious counterparts and I wholly agree that they fully deserve a place in the prog rock archives. "And it came to pass" is a genuine curate's egg of an album - and the glaring misspelling of the words "turbulence" and "losing" in the titles of two of the tracks is distinctly amateurish - but it was most definitely "progressive". I, for one, have not heard anything quite like the title track before or since (although the format is not dissimilar to "A day in the life" off Sgt Pepper), and I still regularly play it on my car cassette thirty five years after its release. To me, that speaks volumes. There are a couple of blues-based numbers that I never really liked, but "Turbulence" and "Achromasia" are wonderful vehicles for some genuinely soulful sax playing by John Surgey and Alan Soloman, working perfectly in harmony, and Dave Pepper and Terry Comer both play in a beautifully understated way throughout. (I seem to recall that Dave was involved in a serious car accident shortly after the LP was released, which may explain his absence from the subsequent LP's - apologies if I have got this wrong.) Paul Carrack, of course, needs no further introduction, but, here, he plays organ in a masterly and swirlingly evocative way. Which brings us to Dransfield Walker. Hell's bells, what a powerful voice this man had!! A bit too heavy and strident at times, maybe, but he certainly gets the band's overriding anti-war message across in a distinctly unforgettable way. "Wash my eyes", is to my mind, the stand out track - coming in at over 14 minutes it gives each band member the chance to show their paces around a compellingly haunting and recurring jazz/rock theme, and it's simply stunning.

Of the band's subsequent releases, there is, sadly (and with one very notable exception), little to say. They don't add anything to the diversity of tracks on the debut release and I would advise you not to search out either. However, the notable exception is the Blind Boy suite off the eponymous third LP. Coming in at 18 minutes, this is one of the greatest prog tracks ever produced - a diverse amalgam of styles and rhythms, fantastic woodwind segments underpinned by urgent, restless, swelling bass/organ/drums. Plus Mr Walker's vocal gymnastics. Not a lead guitar within 50 miles - and not in the least bit missed, either. An altogether wondrous track that knocked the spots of everything else on the LP, indeed, everything else they ever recorded . The recommendation is to get hold of this track, tape it straight after "And it came to pass", get in the car and head east on the M62. The journey from Lancashire to Leeds will simply fly by. With any luck, you might not even notice Halifax. That's testimony enough to just how good these two tracks are in tandem.

As regards a score for the debut LP, not everyone's cup of tea, by any means, and somewhat inconsistent, but a very well-merited three stars (bordering on four) for genuine originality and technical accomplishment. And some excellent tunes, too. Thank you, Warm Dust, for the memories.

Debut album from these obscure UK progsters. Certainly a gamble putting out this much material as a debut set, but there we go. Fitting into the somewhat broad catergory of jazz/fusion, there is plenty of brass and woodwind here. Being a 6 piece, what I'd simply call a big band. Lots to appeal to prog fans here, lengthy numbers, unusual tempo changes and some experimental passages. Vocals have a kind of soulful feel to them. The star of the show must go to keyboard player Paul Carrack who delivers many complex and funky passages throughout. The only drawback is most compositions are not terribly memorable. They seem to have a lack of structure and focus. However, as said the musicisanship is great, so plenty to appeal.

WD is one of those rare groups that started with a double album for a debut (Chicago Transit Authority being the other example I can think of), and the least we can say is that for a double album, it is a monster debut album. Just like Chicago, WD is a brass rock band, with the particularity of not having any brass instruments (no trombone, trumpet or tuba), so they might sit better with the compatriots If, if musically WD was not way proggier than both other groups. The sextet is built around future Rutherford-collab Paul Carrack on keys, Les Walker on vocals and the twin wind section or Surguy and Soloman (seriously!! ;o)). Except for the drum stool, the group will have a stable line-up throughout its three-album career. With a rather tackily funny artwork, their debut album is quite an exploit, manageing not only a double, but also not allowing weaker material, bar the bluesier material (not inferior as such, but always a bit of a waste of time, once you know the group's potential.

Developing a psychedelic brass rock that will enthral most progheads that are not always at ease with Electric Flag or BS&T's soul & RnB adventures, WD keeps a very prog (almost proto-prog at times) providing cool pastoral hippy atmospheres that many woodwind instruments will enhance. The 11-mins Turbulance is the perfect introduction to their world with plenty of interplay between all the musos, but never getting too complex. The following 7-min+ Achromasia is a brassier thing with saxes all over the place. On the flipside of the first disc starts the mega emotive Circus with full dramatics for its 5-min+ duration, and finishes on the 10-mins+ title track, a narrative piece that goes into chaotic free jazz middle section. Both tracks are sandwiching a blues- rock track Keep On Trucking, which holds lesser interest no matter how well executed.

The second disc soothes your ears with a gentle flute, soon to become bedevilled leading into the organ-driven almost-8 mins Loosing Touch, which can drag on at half-speed like Vanilla Fudge did, but never fails to deliver on emotions. The second blues (the one For Pete that last over 7 minutes) of the album is much more impressive, because of Walker's dramatic tone, pulled by devilish sax lines underlining the complete madness of the track. A more upbeat Man Without A Straw (very funk and brassy) and a Richie Havens cover Indian Rope Man (just as funky and brassy) are giving a more Motown feel to this otherwise very progressive album. But let's face it, early 70's Motown (from J Brown to sly stone and George Clinton) has most progheads agreeing with their musical preferences, and it is certainly the case with this writer. The much proggier 14-mins Wash My Eyes has a full spectrum of ambiances and is a constantly evolving tune that reaches complete and utter madness around the 6-minute mark before returning to the organ-ic world it had left behind for a short while and a lengthy calm flute leads the band into orgasm-ic apocalypse.

Exactly how Warm Dust is so unknown to the public is a bit of a mystery, but eventually, one might see that the small Trend label might have lacked the power to push the band through. Nevertheless, WD's IACTP is a small-unearthed gem that later albums will match in terms of preciousness, all three waiting for a wider acceptance from a demanding proghead. In either case, all three albums have received a semi-legit reissue under the Red Fox label, but this writer cannot wait for fully legit releases that would include a rare '70 single as bonus tracks. Very much worth the frequent spins you'll give it in the next months following acquisition and the still numerous spins during the rest of your life. A really shamefully forgotten band along with Brainchild (one album) and Galliard (two albums).

Quite surprised to see And It Came To Pass shouldering the weakest review amongst Warm Dust's three albums. Whereas their latter albums stray into far more commercially viable brass rock territory (Peace For Our Time might seem more daring if the vocals weren't so deeply buried in the mix), And It Came To Pass is a tremendous, sprawling monster of an album, a substantial work of art that it takes a considerable amount of time and dedication to digest. All the trappings of epic prog are here: sprawling, mutli-part suites, wonderfully varied instrumentation, and some of the most aggressive, growling keyobard work I've ever heard on a record. The vocals strive alongside the music (such a shame that these are played down on subsequent albums!) and the lyrical content is impressively well wrought. This is a release to be digested by degrees: I've spent about a year getting to know it, and can shamelessly hand out a five-star review. Sadly, the group would never even remotely come close to this level of songcraft again.

Ambitiously starting their career with a double album, Warm Dust have a complex sound with all sorts of instruments jostling for attention - as well as standard rock instrumentation there's also flutes, organs, pianos, a healthy brass section and various interesting types of percussion thrown into the mix. The band are able to include nods to many of their influences - coming across in parts like a tribute band to early Jethro Tull, at other parts like somewhat more mellow followers of the Mothers of Invention, and so on. But the album is a bit of a muddle, with some filler in to round out the running time (like the asinine Keep On Trucking), and for some reason the band just can't bring themselves to leave vocalist "Les" Walker's voice alone, applying such heavy distortion to it that for half the album he sounds like he's singing from the bottom of a well. Interesting but unconvincing.

You'll note that of the Warm Dust albums reviewed here "And it came to Pass" has been reviewed and rated by more users than "Peace for our Time" and "Warm dust." and its rating is a little lower than those other two.

However, the rating on this is more reflective of the content than at least "Peace," whose average from a smaller number of scores have been easily skewed higher than this effort, higher than they ought, perhaps.

If you're a poet, perhaps "peace in our time" will appeal to you more than "And it came to pass" but as a musician, as a rocker and a bloke who enjoys subtle humour and elements of irony this reviewer finds this album the most palatable of the two.

It reaches greater heights of auditory excitement, with elements that bring to mind the flavours of Tull's "Thick as a brick", Thijs Van Leer's "Focus III" and the era that brought us the recording of "Jesus Christ Superstar" with its fusion of classical, jazz and rock.