SUSPENDED ANIMATION

I'm a sucker for early 1980s neoprog, a magical period in which the British underground 'bounced back' against the dominant musical regime and yielded a great number of bands whose efforts to re-establish the musical language of the previous decade is only partly captured by the official discographies. Aside from the notorious 5 (Marillion, Twelfth Night, Pallas, IQ and Pendragon) a great deal of other bands just published demos, 7", live cassettes while they toured extensively the darkest and grimiest geography of UK's venues. Steering away from the technical dexterity of their forefathers, these bands had passion and power and have thus in part assimilated some of the new blood of the 1980s - they could be taken for postpunkers or new wavers even aesthetically but there is no mistake on where their heart lay, ad those of their audiences. This buried treasure of a scene I have myself briefly participated in when as a sixteener I spend a language school holiday in Cambridge, and every other night could just walk to the local pub and see who was playing that night - Twelfth Night in-between-singer-change, Liaison, Airbridge... Having recently been exposed to Fugazi and fact and Fiction and The Wake I was 'finding my way'. One such bands is Tamarisk, whose legacy is embodied by a couple of unfoundable singles and cassettes, and some CD collections published 30 years later. 'Suspended animation' for what I understand is not exactly new music, and it sounds just like that - and infinite musical enjoyment framed by pinkfloydish guitars, fishy vocals and Orfodian synths. What a joy... since the early minutes into the title track I'm teletransported to some obscure English gig in 1983 and love it. Tracks like PLUS!, The Penetration Gap or Total Coverage (this one I'm sure was played live at the times) are firmly in the Neoprog canon and sound just great. I just wish younger bands, instead of trying to sound reflexively cool and 'contemporary' would stick to this pure passional, never monotonous, fun-DIY sound style. A solid 4 stars for me, veering on 4.5.

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