A MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM

It's fortunate that Twelfth Night, from an early stage in their history, were in the habit of taping their concerts from the soundboard so they could listen back to their performances and spot areas for improvement. It means that we have archival releases like this - a fantastic all-instrumental performance from somewhere between the recording of the First Tape Album demo and the short-lived Electra-fronted lineup of the band.

What you get here is an album much along the lines of Live At the Target, with a sound quality that's almost at that level bar for some glitches here and there. It's understandable that this should be the case when you are dealing with a tape which was originally recorded for the band's personal use and which has sat in an archive for a quarter of a century, but actually they did a fantastic job of tuning up the sound for this release.

It's evident at points that some trimming has been done to keep this release within the bounds of a single CD - much between-song patter seems to have disappeared and the album sort of fades in at the beginning and fades out at the end - but by and large, this archival release is a real revelation, exposing the atmosphere of a Twelfth Night gig in their home town right at the start of their career, before Geoff Mann, the Marquee scene, and the band's brief moment of major label glory came into the picture.