Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory: Traffic. Island IL 34841.

Reviewed by P.F. O'Dea.

"Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory" is a good album: well-conceived, well-played, even excellent in parts, but it never really breaks free of the stricture of Stevie Winwood's careful production and soars. The promise intimated by the title and the cover, a three dimensional mock-up of suits drifting aimlessly through space, is not really borne out by the music.

The title cut and album opener is a medium paced rocker, anchored by Reebop's shifting conga rhythm, which sounds as if it's a section from a longer song arbitrarily sliced at both ends. Winwood's production has smoothed every thing out and his vocal has been buried in the final mix. There are no crests or troughs — the sound is too uniform, too unruffled.

"Roll Right Stones", the long track that rounds out the remainder of the side represents about the same waste of vinyl as "Do What you like" on the Blind Faith album. Winwood's voice is slightly more to the fore but imparts a lyric that is so obscure as to be well nigh unintelligible. The verses are linked by an interwoven piano-sax-organ break which threatens to inject some life into the proceedings momentarily but lack of differentiation between the lead and rhythm section kills it dead. The themes are there, but the variation necessary to carry such a lengthy track is sadly lacking.

Over to side two and "Evening Blue", a ballad in the same vein as "No face, no name, no number" from the first album or the title cut from "John Barleycorn". Building slowly over an acoustic guitar introduction Winwood's vocal is fine, if a trifle inhibited and affected and Chris Wood takes a well-phrased solo against a swirling organ backdrop.

The instrumental, "Tragic Magic", drags but "Sometimes I feel so uninspired", a full-frontal approach to the mythical deficiency, closes the album on a high note. The lyrics are sung depressingly at first as they twist sharply from despair to paranoia into a guitar solo that recalls to mind some of the best of Clapton's work. There's life here, the instrumentation is crisp and well-defined, leaving you with the impression that they' are professionals, completely in control, who know exactly what they want and the best way of going about it. Although Traffic may be an acquired taste, once the listener has granted them their stylistic predilections, at their best, as on this track, they're irresistable.

Stealers Wheel: Stealers Wheel (A&M AML-34763).

Reviewed by Richard Best.

When you first hear Stealers Wheel from England, you're gonna jump up and down and raise merry hell. If you reckon you ever heard a "derivative band", forget it 'cos Wheel cop them all.

They do the Beatles so well you'd be excused for thinking they'd reformed — and after you've heard the album they'll be the crassest musical plagiarists you know.

Happily they're such a bloody delightful band, you'll forgive them for being so outrageously the stealers they are, fall in love with the music and take it all as Stealers Wheel, period.

What that all means is that Wheel aren't original and they're not brilliant. They're unashamedly stolen left, right and centre and come up with a gloriously zippy album that's better than the Raspberries and quite simply one of the best A-grade Pop records I've heard in a long time.

Leiber and Stoller, one-time producers of the Coasters and Presley, have so Americanised Stealers Wheel they sound as United Stated as Gene Pitney and Lassie, without the gloss and plus a dash of British cuteness.

They've also given you a stingy 28 minutes record time but don't complain. Stealers Wheel are very, very good.

Late Again is the most instantly likeable track with JJ Cale stoned lethargy, some amazingly wooden organ and charming falsetto tail-offs from vocalist Gerry Rafferty.

On Johnny's Song they sound so laid-back, it's almost ridiculous — like maybe they were drunk or tired when recording time came round.

I Get By and Jose are slow rockers. Bread- like in construction and if that puts you off, the guitar on I Get By has been pushed so far forward it's shattering.

And then there's Stuck in the Middle With You, the hit song in America. Short, tense and bittersweet: I don't know why I came here tonight/ I got the feeling that something ain't right/ I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair/And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs/ Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right/Here I am, stuck in the middle with you/And I'm wondering what I should do.

Buy this album if only for Late Again and Stuck in the Middle: a lot to pay for six minutes and none of your friends will take you to tea for it. If you want half an hour of Good Clean Stuff, it's better than anything you've bought this year and you'll like it. Promise.

"Aladdin Sane": David Bowie (RCA Victor LSP 4852)

Reviewed by Lilly the Pink.

Bowie has grown up, unbeknown to us all, and the LP that clinches it is this, his latest masterpiece.

The lyrics are hard to understand, the rruisic even harder, but you still love him for it: after all he invited us all to fall in love with him on Hunky Dory and The Man Who Sold the World, but it failed so he seduced us with Ziggy Stardust and we all fell for it. Sucked in.

He's brilliant cos he works on the mind, not the body.

From Drive-In-Saturday to Time, Aladdin Sane is futuristic, delving into the unknown, showing us what's in store, all completely unrealistic, yet credible.

For Bowie, the album is unusually heavy. Listen to the phasing on Panic in Detroit for example. He's changed all right, no mistaking that. He's into something new cos he's got us twisted round his little finger and he knows we'll respond and how . . .

He's given us everything we asked for after Ziggy and more. We're still getting the hard, driving sound of Trevor Bolder's bass and Mick Ronson's lead. These guys, of course, are the - 'Spiders' who won the hearts with Bowie on Ziggy.

He hasn't failed on this album, in fact he's given us more than expected, and how it is revered, it's almost sacreligious.

If you like Bowie, you'd have bought him by now so what else is there to say?

Doug Sahm and His Band: Atlantic Recording.

Reviewed by Gordon Campbell.

'I'd like to think that Bob Dylan's performances on this album are yet another elaborate joke; another mask, (like that Rolling Stone, interview) behind which a duty is performed while giving the least possible clue to where he is really at. But over the last few years he's been working so hard at hiding his artistry that the suspicion is growing that the pretence has become a reality, the cupboard is bare, and in a very depressing sense he's invisible now with no secrets to conceal. Certainly he has never sung worse, played worse or written more wretched material than what appears here. It seems that while he's outgrown the homespun homilies of "Skyline" and "Self Portrait" no new direction has yet formed. Mr Dylan, meet Mr Lennon and welcome to the void.

Doug Sahm himself is a variation on the same theme. Since 1964 he's fronted the Sir Douglas Quintet, a goodtimey Texas outfit that, in their time, dispensed some loose limbed Border blues without ever fulfilling their definite promise. Only two singles ever made it, "She's About a Mover" which was one of the best records of that very good year of 1965, and "Menocino" which carried their good time sound to the very precipice of bubblegum. Predictably, it was their biggest hit. Doug was always a little too weird, a little too stoned, a little too uncoordinated to ever come across with the goods. But he is the fastest talker in the rock business so he managed to round up all the heavies for this session. But its the same old story, for despite the presence of Dylan, Dr John and David Bromberg, and despite the chance this record gave Sahm to move onto a completely different artistic level, he still throws it all away. Dull songs, dull performances and the all time lousy mixing job for which he himself was responsible. Cultural suicide.

In fact, all the energy and creativity here went into the drawing on the cover. But why does everyone on the cover look so happy? Why those shit-eating grins? Considering the quality of the music its enough to make you very paranoid.

"Ege Bamyasi": Can (United Artists UAL—34815)

Reviewed by Richard Best.

This is quite bad.

Can are a five-piece German group, hailed in Britain as the spearhead of the Germanic progressive rock explosion.

Actually, they're pretty boring. As in Dik Mik and Hawkwind, and five arty-farty heads too full of Stockhausen and a "concord of sweet sounds".

Vitamin C has something about "your nose is bloody silly". Yeah, bloody silly. Pinch is a nine minute foray into engineer's tricks and grubby stops-and-starts: "freak-outs" were the words Japanese vocalist, Damo Suzuki, muttered flippantly in an interview.

For those among you dulled by Pink Floyd's excursion into soul music, for those seeking the only genuine electronic extension of Hawkwind, for the heavy-headed among us . . . you might like Can.

Thirty-eight minutes playing time. Go to it.

Lipatti Plays Chopin: Dinu Lipatti, piano (WRC)

Reviewed by Felix Manskleid.

This is a very special recording indeed. It is one of the few recordings available today of a virtuoso who died at the age of 33 in 1950 and is therefore a collector's item. Lipatti was a Rumanian, a musical prodigy who won second prize at the Vienna Piano Festival when he was 15-years-old — a rating which was contested by Alfred Cortot, a member of the jury, who claimed Lipatti deserved first prize and left the hall in protest. Guided by such eminent musicians as Charles Munch and Paul Dukas, Lipatti acquired rapidly the reputation of being one of the greatest interpreters of Chopin in his day. His sensitivity aided by a perception and insight into the music of the famous Pole are apparent in this recording of which the "Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor" was transcribed from a Swiss tape in 1948. The "Nocturne in F flat", "Mazurka in C sharp minor, op. 50. No. 3" and "Waltz in A flat, Op. 34, No. 1" were recorded during the years 1947 and 1950.

Operatic Arias: Renata Tebaldi. Academia di Santa Cecilia Orchestra of Rome/Alberto Erede (Ace of Diamonds).

Reviewed by Felix Manskleid.

A real treat, not only for opera fans but especially for lovers of fine sinking. The quality and range of Renata Tebaldi's magnificent voice has rarely thrilled me as much as in these operatic arias. And as a partner, the Academia Orchestra could very well be the perfect model of how an accompanying orchestra should sound and react: it is there all the time, tactful and never intruding on the star's performance, a fact which unfortunately is not always observed by many ensembles of this kind. The programme is mainly Italian — Mascagni, Catalani, Rossini. . . and Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro", with a couple of arias not often heard or known. As opera goes, they are highly sentimental (sentimentalised?) themes of unrequited love, embittered passion, amorous intrigues and melodramatic situations.

Arcana — Integrales — Ionisation: Varese. Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra/Zubin Mehta (Decca).

Reviewed by Felix Manskleid.

It has been said that the music of Edgar Varese has the beauty and precision of an intricate machine which creates its emotion objectively and not as a subjective projection of the composer's feelings. As one of the outstanding experimentalists of his day, Varese has always been primarily concerned with the organisation of sound, a concept which he traces back to his great love for science and mathematics and favoured as an engineering student. His approach to music is therefore of an abstract and complex nature and he tends to think in blocks of sound that generate their own polyphony or chordal harmony, independently. In spite of this freedom from conformity, most of Varese's works are highly organised, although not really programmed, and possess form and structure. His dissonant world often rejects standard instrumental procedures and combinations, such as the large string section which nevertheless happens to be used in "Arcana", but it is neatly counterbalanced by 39 percussion instruments and an augmented wind section. His obsession with percussion as a means of colour has lead him, as in the case of "Integrales", to increase the percussion elements in the orchestra by changing rhythms and obtaining new "voices" (the lion-roar or string drum) in order to convey the full impact of dramatic overtones. This direction is carried a step further in "Ionisation", one of Varese's most radical works and in which percussive sounds are manipulated for 100% effect. The performance of all three compositions by the LA Philharmonic Orchestra is skillfully handled by this competent ensemble.