I’m not quite sure who to blame for this, but I’m going to start with David Elliott from BEM, moving on to the band themselves if I can’t find the evidence needed. From start to end this is a brilliant pisstake of an album, and I love it. It is combining HHGTTG with Gong, throwing in some bits of Hawkwind and a feeling of the Clangers with the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band and there we have it. This is a comedy album, which really is funny, as well as some excellent songs and performances. The wonderful thing for me is that a back story has been provided so that this all makes sense, and I have seen reviewer after reviewer falling for it: I can just imagine the band and label sitting there reading some of the comments and killing themselves with laughter, when a quick search for some of the names would provide realisation that they only appear about these guys. This is what the band have said about themselves and the album.
“Orange Clocks hail from a shed in the depths of East Northamptonshire and specialize in music of no fixed genre; improvising and jamming for long periods, pausing only to consume lots of tea and biscuits. They have been in their current incarnation for a little over two years, although the seven band members have played together in different musical incarnations for many hazy years, united by a love of psychedelic and hypnotic music (amongst other things).
Originally devised in 1973 by eccentric producer Tomska R Huntley and destined for German TV, Tope’s Sphere was set to be a ground-breaking animation featuring a live soundtrack by 1970's UK/Germany supergroup, Klementine Uhren. The series followed Tope, the knitted monkey protagonist, with his sidekick Chode on their outer-space adventures accompanied by lush layers of psychedelic music. Unfortunately for Tomska, Klementine Uhren were unhappy with the final mixes. They promptly disappeared with all the tapes for an ‘extended session’, never to be seen again. Tomska was bankrupted and his dreams shattered; he dumped what was left from Tope’s Sphere into a skip and vanished into the depths of the Himalayan mountains. After the discovery of the fragments of video tape, stage props and art from Tope's Sphere, Russ Russell (Producer Extraordinaire of Parlour Studios) recruited Orange Clocks to re-imagine the soundtrack, taking what details they could find from the scraps of script rescued from the skip to bring the unique comic-book adventure back to life.”
Even I can work out that the supposed supergroup name translates closely to “Orange Clocks”. I love this album, as it is packed full of early Seventies humour and fun, yet is also a bloody good album, and one I have really enjoyed playing. I love it when a band don’t take themselves too seriously, but I truly hope that they don’t end up being tagged with a “novelty” label as they deserve much more than that. I’m not sure how the humour will translate outside of the UK, but if anyone loves psychedelia and space rock mixed with prog and loads of laughs, then this is brilliant. You can even listen to it on Bandcamp before you splash out and buy the CD, https://orangeclocks.bandcamp.com
