P'COCK

Apparently the great Klaus Schulze, assuredly while his ears were stuffed with triple layered cloth masks, referred to P'COCK as "one of the best fusions between electronics and rock oriented music". I suppose if you filtered enough to get a result set of 1, then maybe. Or not. But perhaps the problem is that the two genres don't really play nice together. Hmm no. P'COCK just isn't very good. They would have been better as an all instrumental all electronic group, but would have been quickly effaced by the giants of that genre.

Wait! A "best of" album by a band with little to no commercial success who released 3 albums in the 1980s, the last of which was apparently so bad that none of it is featured here. Most of their mediocre debut is replicated along with a few tracks from their second and one seemingly unreleased number, "Look at Life", which Is a predictably bland song with reasonably pleasant piano accompaniment.

For the rest, P'Cock packs in uninspired vocal passages with sometimes extended electronica like a zoo school dropout who is convinced that a peacock and peahen who hate each other will mate successfully and live to squawk about it. Needless to say the best offering here is the instrumental "Ban'Cock" (they do love their apostrophes), but some of the lengthier numbers get mildly unannoying when the singing stops, like outtakes of TANGERINE DREAM and ALAN PARSONS PROJECT. a And if pushed, I would say that "Toby" is a serviceable almost power ballad.

Instead of falling a mere few rungs short of fulfilling their initial promise , P'COCK ended up closer in spirit to the also rans of the rank and file of their era like STREETMARK and ANABIS with a competent moog player and a less grating though meh singer. Well, that's something then.

Alan Parsons Project's little cousins

Despite their nationality and being signed on Klaus Schulze's label, the music of P'COCK can neither really be compared to krautrock nor to the Berlin School electronic style. Instead of long mesmerizing soundscapes, what we have here is rather a German version of ALAN PARSONS PROJECT. Pleasant and catchy naive charming melodies played on synthesizers. Nothing more, nothing less.

Side one is quite convincing. With its vocoder, keyboards and spacey ambiance, the title track immediately sets the tone. A nice little retro-futuristic song, prophesying a cool vintage cosmic journey. The more dynamic "The Actors Fun" is pretty much in the style of their fellow countrymen ELOY, especially the "Colours" album, released the same year. It also contains a calmer and slightly floydian relaxing passage. More conventional but nonetheless enjoyable, the poppy and melancholic "Toby" has some reminiscences with TOTO. Back to the stars with "Silver Swallow". While the first half is trippy and floating, the second half turns a bit strange, incorporating symphonic, aggressive and kind of chaotic robotic passages.

Side two is unfortunately not as inspired. Although the catchy "N 1,4" could easily compete with ALAN PARSONS PROJECT's best instrumentals, the AOR "Fly Your Kite" has its moments, but finally sounds overall flat and average. Concerning "La Mer", the longest track of the record, this 10 minutes long suite is not very coherent, rather out of place and fails to really lift off. The ending part reuses the melody of the title track with additional ocean waves sound. It's a pity the disc concludes with its two weak songs...

As you understand, this "Prophet" does neither announce anything genuinely revolutionary nor over-trippy extended hypnotic sequences. However, this first album from P'COCK offers pleasant little vintage electronic music. Give it a listen if you enjoy ALAN PARSONS PROJECT and old-school synthesizers.

The German electronica artist P'COCK originally came into my knowledge via the compilation CD "Dream Machine" by the Innovative Communication (-IC-) label founded by Klaus Schulze. The emotional vocal-ballad 'Toby' made a good impression on that CD, which actually was my introduction to the whole -IC- catalogue (featuring artists such as Software - its duo of Mergener and Weisser are also the producers of this album -, Mind Over Matter, Megabyte, Quiet Force, Peter Seiler, Leif Strand...) that I continued to explore in my early student years with great pleasure. Nowadays that field of music doesn't impress me so much anymore. One might say I grew out of it, to prefer listening to the massive Progressive Electronic works of e.g. Klaus Schulze instead.

Here's the label's advertisement text for P'Cock: "If you like early Genesis, Pink Floyd and Yes - this album is right up your alley. Not that you will get a cheap copy, far from it, but you'll get symphonic rock of the finest kind produced to blow your headphones apart." Extremely promising words, huh? Of course compared to the NewAgey, spacey electronica of -IC- in general this is some sort of "symphonic rock", but actually I prefer many other -IC- artists. This is a case of fall-in-between with a phoney taste. First off, its production is VERY eighties-sounding (oh, this is from 1980 already!), centred around the clinical synths. Kenethlevine puts it nicely: "[tracks] are waltzing robotically in each others' arms". Yeah, there's some kind of robotical lifelessness despite the effort of having an accessible rock drive.

'Fly Your Kite' is a good example of poppy vocal-orientation with poor vocals. Strange how much better they sound on the aforementioned sensitive 'Toby'. On some tracks the vocals are stupidly treated. The title track reminds a lot of certain ALAN PARSONS PROJECT instrumentals such as 'I Robot'. Good progressive music was very scarce in 1980 especially in the continent, so this is not without interest, but the end product is not as good as the goal must have been. Doesn't stand the test of time.

Not nearly as free form or floating as most German electronica, the music of P'Cock is a blend of the synthesized mores of its time with more accessible rock, often within the same track. The vocals are fairly monotonous, perhaps intentionally, and they and the guitars are presented as foils for the main event, the keyboards of Peter Herrman. Tommy Betzler's drums are more lively than one might expect, but without ever taking charge. Among the allusions apart from the scene from which KLAUSE SCHULZE plucked them for his label are ALAN PARSONS PROJECT, ELOY, and a bit of NOVALIS and MINOTAURUS whipped in.

While the competence is unquestioned, the spirit seems unwilling, and very little stands out, with even the lengthy album closer proving tentative. Any one of the tracks would be more impressive in a different setting away from each other than they are waltzing robotically in each others' arms. While "The Prophet" might be of interests for fans of non meditative electronic music, it remains an unconvincing mix that neither sums the past nor proclaims the future. 2.5 stars rounded down.