Track Listing

1. Kaleidoscope
2. Please Excuse My Face
3. Dive Into Yesterday
4. Mr Small
5. Flight From Ashiya
6. Murder Of Lewis Tollani
7. Further Reflections In The Room Of Percussion
8. Dear Nellie Goodrich
9. Holiday Maker
10. Lesson Perhaps
11. Sky Children
12. Flight From Ashiya
13. Holiday Maker
14. Dream For Julie
15. Please Excuse My Face
16. Jenny Artichoke
17. Just How Much You Are

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57131 in Music
• Released on: 2006-03-13
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .17 pounds

Customer Reviews

The most magical psychedelic album ever
There is only one British psychedelic band you really cannot be without, and it's not Pink Floyd. With this their first album, Kaleidoscope created what is possibly the most perfect psyche-pop album ever. Hyperbole? Buy it, play it a couple of times (it'll take a couple) and you'll agree.

Kaleidoscope were too polite for their own good. "Tangerine Dream" is all extremely low key, so don't expect wild, howling sound effects and slippery side-length suites. Kaleidoscope only ever did one piece of all-out-weirdness, "Music" on their second album "Faintly Blowing", which is as highly recommended as this (you'll find the whole thing, as well as much of "Tangerine Dream", on the compilation "Dive Into Yesterday".) Instead, the band fell firmly in the category "toytown", meaning gentle songs about childhood and nursery rhymes and quiet little pastoral love songs. In other words, just like "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn" without the overdrive.

It begins quiet as a mouse with "Kaleidoscope", which sets the tone: gorgeous breathy vocal harmonies over a wimpy beat. Wimpy? Afraid so, though it's not quite down to the level of World of Oz or Gandalf. But bring any cynicism to Kaleidoscope and they fall to pieces like a paper kite in a gale. The album is full of minor little pieces all the same, those beautiful choir boy harmonies over sparse, jazzy melodies on piano and acoustic guitar.

There are two obviously poppy standouts: "Dive Into Yesterday" and "Flight From Ashiya" - if you know either, you know the whole thing, pretty much. But if you love either, you'll adore this album. Not everything works - "Mr Small, The Watch Repairer Man" (it sounds like a rejected episode from Keith West's Teenage Opera) is MUCH too twee, and "Holidaymaker" so upbeat and jolly it jars. However, within the easy listening framework there is real lyrical intelligence here, best heard on songs like "The Murder Of Lewis Tollani" and, especially, "In The Room Of Percussion" which puts some extremely scary bad trip imagery to a simple little pop tune - "My god, the spiders are everywhere!"

However, the whole of the rest of the album is put into shade by its closing track, "The Sky Children", eight extraordinary minutes in which Peter Daltrey sings his masterpiece, a fairy tale about a group of flying children who go on a long Mr Benn-style adventure and come home changed forever. It's one relentless torrent of prose, no time even for an instrumental break, but once you're caught up in the story - and the words are vital, but they're easy to find on the internet - this will change your life. If you survive to the end ("And the children stayed children, and they lived in their dreams") without blubbering you're a harder man than me.

Kaleidoscope from the height of psychedelia
Thanks to Repertoire for doing a wonderful job with the final documentation of England's most underrated psychedelic band. This is the first official release on CD of the group's first album, originally on Fontana, from 1967. Beatifully packaged, fully illustrated, with newly written liner notes by Chris Welch. The sound is probably as good as the master tapes allow. My personal favourite in the long The sky children - a real classic! And you get 6 bonus tracks taken from single releases. Three of them alternate versions of the album tracks (Flight from Ashiya, Holiday maker - A and B-sides of their first single, plus Please excuse my face, the B side of A dream for Julie)and the other three single releases (A dream for Julie (A-side), and Jenny Artichoke (A-side) plus Just how much you are (B-side). My only objection is that the Dutch single B mix of (Further reflections) In the room of percussion was not included. But then there is still room for future releases.The latter track (in its original album version) was included on Mojo's recent Psych out! compilation CD.

Better to come
Kaleidoscope's first album makes all the right late 1960s pop noises couched in appropriately colourful arrangements. I am however a little disappointed, having already bought their next album, "Faintly Blowing", and their sole album under the name Fairfield Parlour. They improved, it seems, as they matured.

This album does contain some memorable tracks. The single "Flight From Ashiya" is a forceful song which features the tragic refrain, "Nobody knows where we are", delivered in a jaunty and therefore macabre manner. The lengthy narrative, "Sky Children" meanwhile points towards their later style. The bonus single, "Jenny Artichoke", is a gorgeous track which features on compilations of so-called psychedelic pop but resembles the freshness of Hollies songs such as "Jennifer Eccles".

Otherwise, the album is full of songs with vivid lyrics that promise much but tend to deliver somewhat mild melodies. Check out the Fairfield Parlour album first and if you like that work backwards.