"Raindances: The Transatlantic Recordings 1973-1975" by GRYPHON – Including Four UK Albums - "Gryphon" (June 1973), "Midnight Mushrumps" and "Red Queen To Gryphon Three" (May and November 1974) with "Raindance" (September 1975) - featuring Richard Harvey, Brian Gulland, Graeme Taylor, Dave Oberle, Philip Nestor and Malcolm Bennett (August 2018 UK Esoteric Recordings Compilation – 4LPs onto 2CDs – Ben Wiseman Remasters) - A Review by Mark Barry...

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"...Midnight Mushrumps..."

Described by one erudite music-press scribbler in the early Seventies as a "...13th Century Slade..." – England's hairy men of GRYPHON replaced bovver boots and mirror-ball top hats with ye olde powdered wigs, frilly velvet coats and chubby lutes sat on cushions surrounded by patchouli bowls and 16-track mixing consoles. 

Their often rhythmically complex instrumental passages crossed over into Amazing Blondel territory (an Island Records band in 1970 and 1971) and into Focus circa 1972 and 1973 on Polydor – a sort of five-piece Medieval Folk act with Prog Rock leanings and flourishes. Gryphon Music feels like Canada's Rush had a love child with England's Fairport Convention or Mr. Fox and didn't know what to do with the resulting squawler – a mishmash of soundscapes that even now defies description. 

But inside this undoubted virtuoso playing was beauty and even prettiness – and each of their four albums for Transatlantic Records came in those glorious stippled-effect artwork sleeves that made collectors like me a little unnecessary in the trouser area. Remastered from original tapes - the audio rocks (another Ben Wiseman winner), the presentation is sweet and I've seen this wee beauty online for under a tenner from some retailers. I love it. Here are the Midnight Mushrumps...

UK released Friday, 24 August 2018 - "Raindances: The Transatlantic Recordings 1973-1975" by GRYPHON on Esoteric Recordings ECLEC22639 (Barcode 5013929473942) offers 4LPs Remastered onto 2CDs and plays out as follows:

CD1 (74:05 minutes):
1. Kemp's Jig [Side 1]
2. Sir Gavin Grimbold 
3. Touch And Go
4. Three Jolly Butchers 
5. Pastime With Good Company 
6. The Unquiet Grave 
7. Estampie [Side 2]
8. Crossing The Stiles 
9. The Astrologer
10. Tea Wrecks 
11. Juniper Suite 
12. The Devil And The Farmer's Wife  
Tracks 1 to 12 are their debut album "Gryphon" - released June 1973 in the UK on Transatlantic Records TRA 262 (no USA release). Produced by LAURENCE ASTON and ADAM SKEAPING - it didn't chart.

13. Midnight Mushrumps [Side 1]
14. The Ploughboy's Dream [Side 2]
15. The Last Flash Of Gaberdine Tailor 
16. Gulland Rock 
17. Ethelion 
Tracks 13 to 17 are their second studio album "Midnight Mushrumps" - released May 1974 in the UK on Transatlantic Records TRA 282 (no US release). Produced by GRYPHON - it didn't chart. 

CD2 (79:54 minutes):
1. Opening Move (9:48 minutes) [Side 1]
2. Second Spasm (8:21 minutes)
3. Lament (10:50 minutes) [Side 2]
4. Checkmate (9:48 minutes)
Tracks 1 to 4 are their third studio album "Red Queen To Gryphon Three" - released November 1974 in the UK on Transatlantic Records TRA 287 and December 1974 in the USA on Bell Records BELL 1316. Produced by GRYPHON and DAVE GRINSTEAD - it didn't chart in either country.

5. Down The Dog [Side 1]
6. Raindance 
7. Mother Nature's Son
8. Le Cambrioleur Est Dans Le Mouchir 
9. Ormolu 
10. Fontiental Version 
11. Wallbanger [Side 2]
12. Don't Say Go 
13. (Ein Klein) Heidenleben 
Tracks 5 to 13 are their fourth album "Raindance" - released September 1975 in the UK on Transatlantic TRA 302 (no US release). Produced by GRYPHON - it didn't chart  

GRYPHON was:
RICHARD HARVEY - Keyboards, Recorders and Krumhorn
BRIAN GULLAND - Bassoon and Krumhorn
GRAEME TAYLOR - Guitars
PHILIP NESTOR - Bass
DAVID OBERLE - Drums, Percussion and Tympanies
MALCOLM BENNETT replaced Philip Nestor for "Raindance" - Bass, Flute and Lyrics 

The 24-page booklet is a pleasingly fat and pretty affair - all four albums covers given a page each and new liner notes from long-time writer MALCOLM DOME on the British band's very English peculiarities. Those who would worry that this is sort of silly Blackadder incidental music should not feel so - there is more Prog Folk or Folk Rock going on here than the mediaeval tag Gryphon is always whacked with. 

For sure as you peruse the song titles provided above - Jolly Butchers, Ploughman's Dreams and Raindances down in the Dog are very ye olde type music - but Gryphon infused the old with the new - and by the time they reached "Red Queen To Gryphon Three" - four lengthy pieces of music - they were very much in the Gentle Giant meets Trees meets Seventh Wave territories more than they were Steeleye Span for instance. The liner notes discuss the lovely Dan Pearce artwork that made their LP sleeves so distinctive and new interviews with Oberle and Gulland fill in how the band struggled and yet forged ahead (there are full LP credits on the final pages). 

But yet again the big news is BEN WISEMAN 24-Bit Digital Remasters from original Transatlantic Records tapes. These Gryphon albums have been issued before (even in Japan) but in my mind, they have never sounded this good - a timely and smart gathering together of their neglected brilliance. To the music...

Highlights include the very Rick Wakeman keyboard tale of forests, horses and dreaming of buxom wenches in "The Ploughman's Dream" on "Midnight Mushrumps" and the one true love acoustic prettiness of "The Unquiet Grave" on the self-titled debut. Speaking of the first album, it is undoubtedly the one most filled with ye olde dances on clavinets and oboes and the like ("Juniper Suite"). Those looking for Prog should go to the nineteen minutes of Side 1 for "Midnight Mushrumps" or the doomy organs of "Gulland Rock" or "Opening Moves" on "Red Queen To Gryphon Three". That beast harbours all their most admired work - long tracks filled with ye-olde rhythms mashed up with new Prog Rock Jazz Fusion flourishes on a Yamaha DX7 keyboard - all of it sounding like Elizabeth I has dropped acid and suddenly wants to expressive herself via the Clavinet, Bassoon, Recorder and Krumhorn (a bent Renaissance woodwind instrument). By the time we get to 1975 and "Raindance", there are even Focus guitar moments in "Down The Dog" and a gorgeous interpretation of that White Album gem "Mother Nature's Son" (The Beatles under another sun) - while "Wallbanger" has a Greenslade sway to its multiple keyboards funk. 

Gryphon would go on to release one further studio set - "Treason" in April 1977 on Harvest SHSP 4063. Neither number five nor the four albums that preceded it troubled any charts anywhere especially given Punk and New Wave's dominance of the mid to late Seventies scene. And always odd anyway – their music seemed even more wildly out of place on a musical map changed forever. 
Founder member Richard Harvey popped out a solo set called "Divisions On A Ground" in April 1975 (Transatlantic TRA 292) and would later pen music for TV and Cinema including Alan Bleasdale's much-loved "G.B.H." from 1991, along with "Animal Farm" and "Arabian Nights" in 1999 and 2000 respectively. 

Supporting Prog-Rock Supergroup YES on their US Tour of 1975 - Guitarist Steve Howe was so impressed with the band's instrumental dexterity that three Gryphonites - Graeme Taylor, David Oberle and Malcolm Bennett (he’d played on "Raindance") turned up on Howe’s debut solo LP "Beginnings" released November 1975 in the UK on Atlantic K 50151. The old band then returned to the fray with two retrospective CDs on Hux Records - "About As Curious As It Can Be" in March 2002 that featured BBC sessions from 1974 and 1975 and "Glastonbury Carol" in July 2003 that featured live recordings at the famous outdoor venue from 1971 to 1974. 

Gryphon were always an acquired taste (this music will definitely not be for everyone), but they were also one of those bands that have grown in stature since their demise – picked up on by Prog fanatics searching for a new fix that they might have missed first time around. 

Dancing in the rain with your frumpy Mushrumps – I'll have me some of that you saucy squire, thank you very much...