HATTITUDE

Ladies and Gentlemen! Another UNMISSABLE Hatfield and the North release. Please do not worry: scraping the barrel this isn't! Just like its predecessor, HATWISE CHOICE, HATTITUDE is a highly entertaining mixture of some live recordings of Hatfields classics (in excellent sound), and some expert improvisations, during which all four members of the band get plenty of chances to shine.

It would be a mistake to say nobody plays music like the Hatfields anymore. Bands like Kenso, Discus and even the Tangent have been trying to do it for years. But any prog freak who cares for the Hatfields' magisterial studio albums will regret that there are no more than two. So if you can't get enough of those classic Canterbury sounds and would like to hear your favourite tunes (and lyrics) undergoing some surprising transformations - look no further!

HATTITUDE may not be available through your usual channels. You'll probably need to order it from burningshed.com, which is run by the musicians themselves. The album is also pricier than your average greatest hits CD, but your purchase will directly benefit the musicians involved. And believe me, the music is worth the asking price. As an extra incentive, HATTITUDE comes with an entertaining 20- page booklet full of anecdotes about the band's wild life on the road. (HAMMER OF THE GODS is nothing compared to this!) The sleeve notes also contain some fascinating information from Barbara Gaskin. She points out that, for the studio albums, the Northettes never sang together in the studio. They all learned and recorded their parts separately. Now who'd have thought it?

This is something of a companion piece to Hatwise Choice, with a similar ethos - offering the cream of the Hatfield and the North vaults, helping to fill out the missing pieces in the story of a band who were crucial to the mid-1970s development of the Canterbury scene (containing former members of the likes of Caravan, Khan, Arzachel/Egg, and Matching Mole, and acting as a forerunner to National Health) but whose studio output only consisted of two albums.

Derived from live recordings, radio sessions, and demos, you might expect this to have fairly patchy sound quality, but actually it's much more consistent than you'd expect from such a diversely-sourced collection. As with Hatwise Choice, some of the compositions here may have new titles but prove to be different takes or interpretations on familiar tunes, but there's also enough improvisation and whatnot and sufficient variations from the studio renditions that this doesn't feel redundant.

There may well be more in the vaults than this - but the fact that the Hatfield camp has been satisfied to leave this archival series at two releases suggests that the cream of the crop is already represented here. As with its predecessor, this is in no way as essential as the band's original albums, but once you've digested those it makes an excellent next stop.

Like "Hatwise Choice" released in January of 2005, "Hattitude" is a compilation of live tracks performed at the BBC Radio and beyond. This was released in 2006 and is a nice companion album to "Hatwise Choice". Again we get just the band with no Northettes or guest appearances. Pip Pyle picked and assembled the tracks for both compilations. The liner notes are invaluable by the way for being incredibly detailed, with each member giving their take on the band's history from their start in 1972. There are pages of this as they would take a period of the band's history, then they each comment on it in detail.

Pip admitted that there really wasn't enough quality material for a second compilation until Dave Stewart discovered in his storage until a box full of original reel-to-reel tapes recorded between 1973 and 1975. And they were in good shape as it turned out. Pip realized now that they had more than enough for a second release, and possibly even a third! Pip was at it again this time going through about 40 hours worth of music and culling the good stuff. A long job as it took Pyle about 2 months. When he could he would edit the songs into segued passages making these tracks blend into each other. He did this because when they played they would go from one song to the next without a break. Just like SOFT MACHINE before them.

Sadly, in the liner notes, the band relates "Our dear friend and colleague Pip Pyle died in Paris in the early hours of August 28th 2006. He was our founder member and the driving force of HATFIELD AND THE NORTH... this cd... is dedicated to his memory." They also mention absent friends like Mike Patto, Alan Gowen, Steve Miller, Peter Bardens, Pierre Moerlen, Elton Dean, Pip Pyle, and others who have gone on before. The one surprise for me in the thanks department is the one to Gavin Harrison. We get 21 tracks and under an hour of music this time.

I am so glad they included "Al Clark Presents", that final track. Live from 1975 and just over 2 minutes, we get Al Clark who at the time was Virgin Records Press Secretary, presenting the band with a lot of clever humour and complimentary words. It made me proud. By the way Dave Stewart may have been inspired by Pip's hard work and the results with these two compilation albums, as he would do the same for his previous band EGG, and release an archival album the following year to this, in 2007. He called it "The Metronomical Society" and it is incredible. Better than the two HATFIELD comps in my opinion. And no one writes better liner notes than Dave Stewart. So funny.

For HATFIELD AND THE NORTH fanboys both of these comps are nothing but essential. It shows the band in a different light than on their two studio albums.