HATFIELD AND THE NORTH

Out of the classic Canterbury Prog bands, Hatfield & the North seems to be buried by Caravan's happy prog, The Machine's jazziness and Gong's trippiness. However, there's really no explanation for this since Hatfield & the North were another top-notch band with a unique style which combined the easy-listening but still sophisticated music of Caravan with lots of nonsense and an essential jazzy flavor. With Richard Sinclair at the front with his unique voice and overlooked bass playing, and Dave Stewart on the keys, you've got here one of the most enjoyable supergroups music history has ever gave us.

Their debut is no less than fascinating, having a spectacular flow that, alike many Soft Machine albums, the whole album is connected one way or another, meaning that from one tune to the other there's at least a tiny relation and makes the album far more jointed than albums that have ten or so absolutely un-related songs.

This album delivers the listener from simply pleasurable melodic sung tunes like 'Big Jobs'(both parts), 'Calyx', 'Aigrette' and 'Licks for the Ladies' to intricating structured songs with lots of shifts and with very impressive musicianship like 'Son of There's No Place like Homertorn', 'Gigantic Land-Crabs in Earth Takeover Bid' and 'Shaving is Boring'. However, I recommend the listener not to detract from the longer tunes since the enjoyability of those tunes comes along with the addition of having heard those lovely short tunes I mentioned first.

There might be no 'Nine Feet Underground' or anything in the vein of 'Third', but still this debut album gives me the same, or sometimes even more, amount of enjoyment than those other classic Canterbury Prog albums give me. The music of this group is so tasteful and sophisticated that I can't see anyone with a good taste in music not liking this, though I've got to say I've known people who simply dislike the music written by Canterbury musicians.

A flawless masterpiece with no real highlight other than the album itself as a whole: if you're a fan of Jazz Fusion/Rock check this out, Hatfield & the North makes a unique twist from that genre. Also, anyone interested in Canterbury Scene, this is indeed a very good start.

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