Egg - The Polite Force FLAC album

EGG - THE POLITE FORCE (ECLCD 1015) CD 43m
continued from a dual review with the debut
THE POLITE FORCE amounted to a logical development, with longer tracks, fewer songs, and more experimentation. In between this and the previous album they'd got back together with Uriel (pre-Egg) member Steve Hillage and recorded the notorious Arzachel album, which obviously refocused their minds as to where Egg should go. This is one of the true classics of British rock, and one of those albums that helped define what we call the Canterbury sound. Of course, a lot of this is down to Dave Stewart's keyboards, with less that sounds like normal organ here, and Mont Campbell had added organ, piano and French horn to his instrumentation. A bigger richer sound then, especially with the addition of guest winds on (track two) Contrasong the jazziest of Egg's material, aptly the song rides over the music - not with it - hence the title. After a fake run-off from a very old humming turntable it's all-change with Boilk. A very short weird little ditty called Boilk appeared on the first Egg LP, but here we have 9 minutes of mutilated organ, fragmented sounds and collage, with lots of crazy reversed and spliced tape work. I'll say it again - extraordinary! Long Piece No. 3 took up all Side Two of the LP and is a weaving potpourri of interlinked themes and diversions, with more Stravinsky like percussive piano involved, and much stranger use of rhythmic structures. The avant-garde bits here are more interleaved, with it all so clever sewn together, it's a work that could go on almost endlessly without ever becoming boring! No bonus material on this one!
review by Alan Freeman in Audion magazine 52 (2006).