SPOOKY TOOTH & PIERRE HENRY: CEREMONY

The first time that I listened to this album was in the late seventies in an AM Radio station's broadcast . That AM radio station from my city was called "Radio Capital" (I don't know if it still exists) and it had a then famous radio programme called "Vibraciones", which some days of the week broadcasted some albums by some bands at night.

For this album, the original bassist of the band Greg Ridley (who went to form HUMBLE PIE) was replaced by Andy Leigh. The album's full title is "Ceremony - An Electronic Mass", and it was released as a collaboration by SPOOKY TOOTH / PIERRE HENRY, but in France it was credited as being an album by "PIERRE HENRY AVEC SPOOKY TOOTH".

This is an Experimental / Avant Garde / Rock Music collaboration between French Electronic Music composer PIERRE HENRY and the English Rock band SPOOKY TOOTH. I don't know how this collaboration was agreed and done, but it really sounds more like HENRY recorded his electronic music parts after the band recorded their musical parts. It really gives the impression that both parts were recorded separatedly and later mixed together song by song, which each song credited to be composed by HENRY with GARY WRIGHT (the main composer in the band). The sound mixing in my opinion is not very good, because HENRY's parts are more at the front of the mixing, and the music of the band is more in the background, with HENRY's parts sometimes sounding more like "interferences" to the band's music. This album has very good musical parts played by the band with the added electronic effects, noises and voices by HENRY. But, as a whole, it really wasn't a very successful collaboration. It has some interesting musical parts, but, as WRIGHT said in one interview, it really wasn't an album done in SPOOKY TOOTH's typical musical style, and it wasn't considered by him and the band as a SPOOKY TOOTH album, but the record label anyway wanted to release it as an album by SPOOKY TOOTH with PIERRE HENRY, against the band's wishes

Considered by Wright as a "failure" that "ended our career then", I think that this album has some interesting moments, even if I am not very much a fan of Experimental / Avant Garde music. Wright and Leigh left the band after this album was released, and the remianing members of the band (Grosvenor, Harrison and Kellie) remained together for a short time to record their next album titled "The Last Puff" (1970).