MOVING GELATINE PLATES

This French outfit's debut album is a propulsive work of Canterbury-styled jazz-rock with psychedelic influences (although it isn't quite as heavy in this direction as Lard Free's debut album). Thankfully the music has enough idiosyncracies to give it its own personality, making it quite an essential purchase for jazz-rock afficionados. Like most Canterbury styled bands, Moving Gelatine Plates is defined partly by the heavy presence of organ and saxophone/flute although in this case they are all played by the same guy ... Maurice Hemlinger. He is naturally enough the focal point of this album, although guitarist Gerard Bertram emerges from time to time (a blistering solo midway through London Cab and another one in Last Song stand out).

These guys also have a strange scene of humour the vocal elements of London Cab for example are basically a helium-voiced version of Three Blind Mice! Perhaps a little unlike most Canterbury bands, they can also churn out some mean heavy rock riffs. My two favourite pieces are probably Gelatine, which is a psychedelic Floyd meets Soft Machine masterpiece, with prominent organ from Hemlinger, a well-packaged bass solo from Didier Thibault and fantastic riffled drumming from Gerard Pons and the 15 minute long Last Song (which is actually the penultimate track here).

Last Song is full of high-octane jazz-rock, although it can seem overlong ... what with a monster Pons drum solo and all (I think it goes on for nearly 4 minutes!). Thankfully just as you are about to get tired of it, a very nice psych organ section takes over. The concluding track Memories is a melancholy acoustic guitar/flute instrumental that is quite different from the rest of the album, showing the diversity the group had at its disposal.

This debut came out in 1971, and the next year MGP released the World of Genius Hans before breaking up. Oddly enough, the four bonus tracks here are from the "group's third album Moving. Moving was a 1980 recording made by bassist Thibault without Hemlinger, Bertram or Pons, thankfully these instrumental tracks aren't weak ... the delightfully bouyant Solaria is a real standout and the semi-Gothic Destruction has a fair bit of personality, even if they lack do lack that carefree quality of the music of the original quartet. ... 72% on the MPV scale