Billed as Experimental/Cinema Italiano, this album has eccentricity written all over it. The inspiration here is sci-fi author Phillip K. Dick and in particular one of his novels “Radio Free Albemuth”. I confess that this reference and indeed the works of this author are not known to me, but I am partial to experimental music, and there’s every sign that “The Egg That Never Opened” has plenty of that.
Some albums go beyond genre classification, and this is one of them. Within the first two minutes we’ve had the Chattanooga choo choo, Eastern European folk dance including Romanian short notes, oompah, pre-war songsmanship, the sound of Hawaii and a lot of woozy and distorted atmospheres. distorted soundscapes and the old-fashioned tones of a drama film. The ambiance is old-fashioned, so much so that it makes me think of musical accompaniments to grainy old films. “Ich Bin’s” sounds like a French or maybe Central European romantic waltz with holes blown through the schmoozy pieces. This is followed by dark, saxophone-laced electro.
After the old low-fi tone of the first two pieces, “The Aramcheck Accusation” is more produced but no less bizarre with its wispy dreamy sound. “Valisystem” could indeed be mistaken for a song with lyrics and verses but flutes mix with horns, guitars and other assorted sounds to enrich and muddy the atmosphere. The nearest I can get to describe this in a musical context is late Beatles psychedelia. In spite of the obvious lack of rules, it bowls along nicely but just not in any way that could be described as conventional. “Valisystem” somehow has emotion and even flow and power, if you don’t mind the abundant musical interventions. “At Last He Will” starts like an orchestra tuning up, and as we had with the opener “The Egg that Never Opened” and in particular “Ich Bin’s”, it’s like the dénouement to an utterly bizarre art film. Somehow after a sombre and highly dramatic progression we find ourselves being twirled round Parisian boulevards, and then into a 60s environment with what sounds like the Shadows providing the accompaniment. “The Days of Blue Jeans Were Gone” take us, or at least some of us of an older disposition, back to the days of test card music, the BBC Light Radio programme, and accompaniments to 1970s American family shows, but with the sophistication of saxophones, jazz and the invocation of a film-produced dream world.
“Diagnosing Johnny” is a disturbing piece, not least because of its obscure sound, and recreation of vocal harmonies from 70s adverts, which evidently are out of the place in 2022. The harmonies are like the Beach Boys meeting the King’s Singers. But this is the thing about this whole album: it’s from many times and places, to my ears mostly the 60s and 70s but also earlier, and whilst it’s Americanised in the commercial style, it’s not confined to any country or continent and yet all the while its sound is abnormal. I half expected Andy Williams and the Osmonds to appear with a harmony, while also recalling Bill Bryson’s book about his childhood in America with those adverts with wholesome people advertising the products of the day, the jingles which went with the adverts and early colour shots of people in 1950s diners eating chocolate cream pie. Yep, that’s what I thought. Oh, and then the High Castle Teleorkestra’s answer to the Shadows enter the moody double bass world of “Placentia”. Off it goes jazzily and foot-tappingly with those 60s guitars strains, broken down of course and made more sinister with the sound of the xylophone. It all comes out as a smoochy, bluesy, soulful piece, thus defying any possible logic. Moodiness is something that High Castle Teleorkestra specialise in, and to the oom-pa-pa backdrop of the theme music to the Keith Floyd cookery programmes, the saxophone and double bass lead us through “Klawpeels (Mission Checkup). The sound of Romanian folk returns and leads the dance orchestral romp of “Mutual Hazard”, but with a swing rhythm which would do Diablo Swing Orchestra proud. But above all, it’s a treat of musicianship and excitement, and a pulsating way to end.
We all come from different worlds, and that for me is the selling point of this album. What I hear will be different from what everyone else will hear. I can only relate this vast amalgam of sounds and styles to my experiences. I honestly don’t know about Phillip K. Dick but I do know through research that he is the author of Blade Runner and that Radio Free Albemuth, also a film, is a dystopian novel. There are elements of dystopia in the early stages, but this is a collective of creative ideas. Again I can’t comment specifically on Cinema Italiano, but there is most definitely an old-fashioned film soundtrack touch to this album. Yet here am I relating it to elements of USA and the UK between the 1950s and 1970s while also recognising the mainland Western and Eastern European influence. This is world music. “The Egg That Never Opened (Radio Free Albemuth part 1)” is highly original. My brain was in overdrive listening to this album, as I immersed myself in the musical fusion of styles and experiences which fall out of this masterful work of surprisingly co-ordinated escapism and creativity.
(8.5/10 Andrew Doherty)
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