An Introduction to Astral Glam

Reissue of ultra rare recordings of much acclaimed late 70’s London punk band – but some clarification of the label “punk” in this case is in order: “they wrote great pop tunes… but seemed to have much more fun dismantling and sabotaging them” (liner notes). These guys knew no rules, often replacing the loud angry electric guitar w/ an acoustic at just the right/wrong moment. A “punk” song turns spacey, a spacey one turns punk. All the sass of Peter and the Test Tube Babies, the crunch of The Clash, the beauty of Swell Maps, Wire, the sheer joy of Television or Rough Trade bands of the era, all wrapped into one. Throw in the tiniest dash of The Cars and Bowie maybe even somehow. Amazing retrospective.

1) epic glammy echoey not very “punk”
2) London punk, upbeat
3) upbeat urgent w/ acoustic guitar instead of electric devolves to uber spaciness, huh?
4) scattered feel, reverb and trippy sounds make it almost spacey, prog
5) more of a classic London punk sound, turns jammy if you can believe it
6) simple, crunchy, proto pop punk, great
7) starts urgen, turns almost 70’s stoney, ?
8) searing guitar, classic London tone
9) upbeat punk, fun
10) trippy, w/ piano strings, creative
11) straight up driving rock
12) good strong beat w/ silly chorus, harmonies
13) awesome overdriven disjunct singalong
14) slow sparse noodly turns almost epic 70’s classic rock
15) like a 70’s art-rock spoof, weird
16) more “art-rock”, like a disjunct Television/Wire
17) acoustic minimal song (no drums)
19) funky post punk air, instrumental, jammy
20) low fi rocker shifts to slow middle
21) low fi tom tom heavy pop rocker turns tribal
22) acoustic w/ fem vocs, drums enter and it turns cute pop
23) very spacey echoey droney build-up
24) near silly, minimal, low fi w/ fem vocs, picks up cool beat midway
25) low fi minimal, acous guit, tambourine
26) trippy echo efx heavy dubby bass
27) simple upbeat London art rock