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The shock of King Crimson’s arrival, ascendancy and
transatlantic success – all in a period of just under a year - carried within
it the seeds of the line-up’s implosion in December of 1969 when Ian McDonald
and Michael Giles left the band.
Taking up the option to record an album as a duo -
with Michael’s brother Peter taking the role as bass guitarist – the
eponymous album was recorded in the summer of 1970 and released in the UK in
November of that year. It was and remains a minor classic of the late British
Underground era – an album that could only come from that particular time and
place and, very obviously, an album that was always intended as just that – a
studio construct with no evidence that it was ever imagined as music that
could or might be played on the 1970 gig circuit – (though some of the material would, eventually, be performed by the 21st Century
Schizoid Band in 2002).
Inevitably perhaps, there was some continued
crossover with King Crimson activities – both Michael and Peter played on the
Jan/April sessions for Crimson’s “In the Wake of Poseidon” prior to the
recording and Peter Sinfield contributed lyrics for side 2 of McDonald &
Giles’ ‘Birdman’. Inevitable also, that some material had a shared lineage
with KC, most notably in ‘Flight of the Ibis’, as it was the original melody
for what became ‘Cadence and Cascade’.
But if Mike’s instantly recognisable drum sound and
position as that generation’s most gifted drummer and Ian’s skills as a
multi-instrumentalist and composer were, by this point, established, the
considerable charm of the record comes from the different direction in which
the duo took some of the familiarities from their earlier shared band – both
compositionally and in arrangements – the vocal harmonies on Birdman more reminiscent
of late Giles, Giles and Fripp, the expanded sound coming – not from a
mellotron but from full string and brass sections, Steve Winwood’s piano and
organ solo sound on the ‘Turnham Green’ section of album opener ‘Suite in C’ would
be instantly familiar to anyone who had heard the July 1970 released “John
Barleycorn Must Die” album and the overall album had a gentler, more wistful,
autumnal sound than anything Crimson would record.
Although not a huge success when initially released,
the album became a cult favourite and garnered a broader following over the
decades to the point where it is now much better known than it was in
1970/71.
Always concerned that the mixes on the album as
released were rushed and never quite completed in the manner the artists would
have preferred, in 2001 Ian and Michael revisited the album – making slight
edits to the original masters and remastering the entire recording. It is
that master that is now being reissued more widely for this release.
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