ON LAND AND IN THE SEA

More musical mayhem from those crazy Cardiacs. If anything they ramped up the sound and overall intensity make this album initially harder to appreciate.However repeated listens ultimately reveals the shear brilliance of the music.The opening track "Two Bites Of The Cherry" is a great Prog Rocker and fairly conventional for them which still means head spinningly complex with a myriad of tempo changes. "The "Duck and Roger The Horse" (I'm fairly sure that is a naughty pun) is one of those tracks that delights fans and draws disgust from their many detractors.Its rapid-fire cut-n-paste collage of musical themes instrumentation is probably the best example.I can actually understand why many listeners simply cannot cope with this aural madness.I also like music to flow and settle into some kind of groove.Cardiacs simply do not allow you to do that. I find it strangely exhilarating to have what seems like a whole album worth of music whizz past in a space of a few seconds.The music is not true chaos rather than intensely complex which is why repeated listens are required at least by slowcoaches like me to "get it". "Leader Of the Starry Skies"is another great anthemic rocker although still with plenty of key and tempo changes to keep things interesting. "I hold My Love In My Arms" is pure Music Hall but shot through with their usual madness.It actually reminds me of Queen's similarly cod-music hall inspired "Lazy On a Sunday Afternoon" or "Seaside Rendezvous".Just a bit more aggressive and intense. Robert Smith's lyrics are as dense as the music and equally as obscure though not meaningless.He appears to be inspired by the Irish Poet George Darley and even paraphrases him occasionally as in "Mare's Nest".Punk inspired they may be but these musicians were far from lowbrow. The closing track "The Everso Closely Guarded Line" is another epic similar in terms of its sheer grandeur to the previous albums's close "The Whole World Window" and is frankly brilliant and a contender for the best Cardiacs song ever.Another highly complex amalgam of styles -Symphonic Prog,Punk, Medieval,(yes you read that correctly) Music Hall and Music Concrete. An absolute masterpiece from beginning to end.Pure genius.5 stars