VELVET THUNDER

It sounded good in 1984, and it still sounds better than it should have any right to in 2024. We may not be those youthful heroes of the market square any more, riding the wave of our very own musical movement and immersing ourselves in live gigs and the bits of neo-prog vinyl which began appearing – but in our minds, just for 39 minutes, somehow we are...

It’s quite a common occurrence these days to find bands who were overlooked decades ago to be dug up from the archives and ‘rediscovered’ as it were. In the great majority of cases, this involves acts who were around in the early 70s or thereabouts, and have their only album, which only ever sold about six copies, unearthed by one of the splendid labels who specialise in such things. It’s always interesting, and frequently a source of surprisingly good music, giving an opportunity to reassess history and try to redress the balance a little. What is far more unusual is to a) find a band from a decade later in the early ’80s getting that treatment, and b) it being said band themselves, recently reformed after four decades, to be doing the ‘rediscovering’ of their own history. That, however, is what we have here with UK neo-prog band Trilogy, who have unearthed a batch of old recordings made by themselves back in 1983/84, and finally issued them on this very nicely packaged CD.

Now, the thing is that Trilogy were one of the regular faces on the touring schedule of the original neo-prog movement, often gracing the stages of venues such as the Marquee, where bands such as Marillion, Pendragon, Pallas, Solstice, Twelfth Night and the like plied their wares and bestrode the stages in what was a genuinely exciting movement, seeking to reclaim the spirit of progressive rock music, condemned to the dustbin of history some five or six years before by such ‘arbiters of cool’ as the NME. This myth was even bought into by the likes of Yes, who released the appalling Owner Of A Lonely Heart while trumpeting loudly that the fans had ‘moved on’, and that ‘no one wanted Close To The Edge any more. This of course was revisionist nonsense of the highest order, as grown men do not as a rule abandon listening to everything they loved only five years before (think back to the year before Covid – five years. How dramatically have your tastes changed since then? Precisely). Thus the neo-prog movement was seized upon by a host of 20-somethings with the fervour of a drowning man on a lifebelt, with even the more generic and less inspired bands being eagerly listened to. They might not all have had the spark of genius that the early ’70s ignited, but dammit, they were still playing the music they loved, and that alone counted for a hell of a lot. For those of us around at that exciting time, these were OUR bands, these were OUR people, and we gathered around them like prodigal sons returned. It was tribalism, yes – but in its most positive and least destructive fashion, uniting in a genuine shared love of the music that we had been told that we no longer wanted or needed. And we weren’t going to take it any more.

Many, like myself, will remember Trilogy from that time. Some, I would take a fair guess, may be as unaware as I was that this promise had not led to a recorded catalogue behind the guys. So, forty years it may be, but justice has now been served with these eight vintage pieces seeing the light of day for the first time (barring the odd compilation and primitive cassette-only release). It could very easily have turned out as a dreadfully underwhelming vanity project serving only to cloud those memories of halcyon days – but happily, not a bit of it, as this is excellent stuff, made even more so by virtue of being bathed in the warm glow of nostalgia. Okay, so you’re not going to get some sort of cutting edge 21st century prog album – unless they possessed a time machine in 1983, that would be an impossibility. Rather, it is exactly the music you remembered in the jukebox of your mind from when Pendragon were playing The Black Knight, and Pallas were playing Crown Of Thorns, and the sweat was dripping down the walls of whatever tiny venue it was. And while it may be hard to objectively judge how well this would have cut the mustard as a new album in 1984, my ears can discern no reason why this should pale alongside albums like The Jewel, The Sentinel or Live At The Target. The biggest touchstone throughout is probably early Pendragon, though there are exceptions to this – the (almost) instrumental Break! for example comes over energetically like prime Steve Hillage, while the closing Arctic Life trips along in a fiercely upbeat fashion, all jaunty Marillion keyboard fills as it channels a real Market Square Heroes vibe. Those two tracks are clear highlights, but the best of the lot might be the title track, opener Hidden Mysteries, which unfolds magnificently over its all-too-brief five minute duration. The longest piece, the six and a half minute Messages, is almost as good, with the atmospheric Sahara and the ambitiously structured Different Forms keeping the quality up. It may only be 39 minutes overall, but for music which was recorded a little before the CD arrived to revolutionise the concept of album lengths, that was widely seen as around the perfect playing time anyway – and many still concur to this day.

The packaging is also deserving of some mention in dispatches as well, being no throwaway ‘it’s just a demo’ release. A handsomely illustrated lyric booklet is every bit as nicely presented as any new and freshly minted product you could name. Clearly, this is an important release for the recently reformed band, and to their immense credit they have presented it as such, lavishing it with the care and eye to presentation that it has deserved ever since you were young, with more energy, more hair and less of a waistline than you may well have today! This is like one of those time capsules which used to seemingly be buried every five minutes in the 1970s on TV programmes such as Blue Peter – you know the ones, a box full of current magazines, records, cultural artifacts etc, to be opened in several decades’ time – normally the year 2000 back in those unimaginative days! Some of those things might well have severely underwhelmed the average post-millennial youth, with Blue Peter annuals and chart 45s spilling from the box, but this particular buried treasure suffers no such issues. It sounded good in 1984, and it still sounds better than it should have any right to in 2024. We may not be those youthful heroes of the market square any more, riding the wave of our very own musical movement and immersing ourselves in live gigs and the bits of neo-prog vinyl which began appearing – but in our minds, just for 39 minutes, somehow we are. The future once again seems pregnant with the promise of jesters, sentinels and the like – and the occasional Hidden Mysteries that, like this one, are eventually uncovered. If you’re the target audience for this, it will be an absolute blast, albeit tinged with just the smallest amount of melancholy which is echoed in the music so well. An unexpected joy.