search and destroy: gorky's zygotic mynci

moon beats yellow

I reckon their best albums are Bwyd Time and Barafundle

Best Gorkys album IMHO = Bwyd Time, Worst = Gorky 5. I haven't heard much post Gorky 5 stuff sadly, and now Johns left I am a very sad kid. Tatay has some great stuff on it as well, whereas Patio is more garagey punky. Anything up to Bwyd Time will certainly be worth a listen. I especially recommend Merched yn Neud Gwallt eu Gilydd oh oh and HEART OF KENTUCKY on the fantastic Amber Gambler LP (the first rekid I evah bought offa Gorkys...) YAY! Right I am going home and listening to Gorkys tonight!!! *skips off home singing*

Peanut dispenser, peanut dispenser,
Dere lan i gweld fi'n chwa-chwa-chwarae,
Peanut dispenser, peanut dispenser,
S'dim rhaid i ti ta-ta-talu neu,
Oren neu melyn neu gwyrdd neu porffor a,
Wah wah wah wah wah, Joshua
Wah wah wah wah wah, y peanut dispenser.
Peanut dispenser, peanut dispenser
Edrych ar y bo-bo-bore
Peanut dispenser, peanut dispenser
Dangos i fi y go-go-golau
Seta plastic manw'n neud dim sens i,
Fi fi fi fi fi,
Wah wah wah wah wah, Joshua
Wah wah wah wah wah, peanut dispenser

Oh yeah, and I knew all that Welsh right off the top of my head and didn't copy or paste or nuffink. Ahem. WA WA WA WA WA, JOSH!uaaah!

Search...*thinks*...oh, just find everything on Ankst, for starters.

The Girl I've Always Known; Pentref Wrth Y Mor; Diamond Dew; The Summer's Been Good From the Start...so many lovely songs.

I had this dream again last night, for the first time in years and it scared the crap out of me.

Erm, yeah. GZM. They have a song called "A Game Of EYES!!!!!" which also scares the crap out of me.

I'd say Barafundle 's their bestest.
And Gorky 5 the piss-poorest.

Search:
1. Hush The Warmth
2. The Game Of Eyes
3. Can Megan
4. Murder Ballad
5. Spanish Dance Troupe
6. Catrin
7. Diamond Dew/Barafundle Bumbler/Starmoonsun/Patio Song (they have to be heard in order for some reason)
8. Dyle Fi
9. If Fingers Were Xylophones
10. Queen of Georgia
11. Blood Chant
12. Stood On Gold

I still don't know what to make of their latest album - the first half is great but the second is a bit boring and the whole thing is lacking in weirdness. Shit cover too.

what's "20" like?

What should I get?

Gorky 5 - I always imagine the band being trapped in one of those snowglobes. Lots of grandiose swirling ballads. A lot of people don't like it so much because it was such a step away from Barafundle but in it's defense it does have some excellent moments, among them "Sweet Johnny", "Dyle Fi", "Catrin" and the remarkable "Hush The Warmth".

Spanish Dance Troupe - A slight return to their odder days. I'd say this was their most like Barafundle but not exactly. "Faraway Eyes" reminds me of Cockney Rebel in a weird way and the title track is awesome. I'd say this is one of their strongest later albums.

The Blue Trees - Many peoples favourites but not mine. It's a live in the studio acoustic mini album. It's not awful by any means, just a bit short and straightforward for me. "Face Like Summer" and their version of "Fresher Than The Sweetness In Water" are both awesome.

How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart - I was disappointed by this one at first but in recent months it's become one of my all-time favourites. Tim, I think you'd like "Can Megan" off of this one as it's kind of similar to "Starmoonsun". Like Gorky 5, this album takes a bit of adjusting to as it's a totally different sound and structure to the other albums. The songs are mostly warm very well produced pop/folk ballads but there is a certain prog-iness to them. The title track for instance is based on a very simple idea that builds and builds and suddenly transforms and blossoms right at it's peak.

Sleep/Holiday - Another one which I've had since last year but have had trouble with. I can't give it classic status just yet but again there are some rated tunes on here. The prog element of the last album is raised here - there are a lot of long tracks and this disquieting stillness to the whole thing. Tracks like "Pretty As A Bee" just seem to hang there like leaves waiting to fall from trees. I'd say it's more of a mood/ambient album than anything else and apart from the rather irritating "Mow The Lawn", should be treated as such.

Over all I'd say that the quintessential Gorky's is "Barafundle". As someone said way upthread, it is where the old and new style Gorkys meet. They'd perfected their craziness and were dabbling in pop and balladeering too. I like the "Bwyd Time" album a lot as well.
Apart from "Barafundle", all the albums are well worth checking out without exception. I can't really rate one over the other as they're all very different and equally deserving.

The Gorkys are famous for mentioning the seasons in their later albums and I'd go so far as to assign a month of the year to each one. Let's do it just for fun:

Barafundle: April
Gorky 5: January
Spanish Dance Troupe: September
How I Long: July
Sleep / Holiday: November

Agree?

Alba, I'm glad there's been a spate of Groky threads cos it's made me listen to them loads recently and I think I'm starting to realise they could well be up there with Pavement, Blur and the Boo Radleys as one of my favourite bands.

I even went so far as to burn off a CD-R of the best of their non-weird chillout "How I Long"/"Dyle Fi"-style ballads and they've been the recent soundtrack to my sunny lunchbreaks.

Er, I didn't mean "Apart from" - I meant "As well as"

Richard from the band has a country-rock sideproject which I saw the weekend before last. It was pretty nice. Dunno if they've recorded anything

I should note that my renewed interest in GZM was inspired by realising that every time I was disappointed by some highly rated prog/psych/folk album it was because I wished it was more like Barafundle.

PERFECT!

Introducing Gorky's Zygotic Mynci is one of the best compilations I have ever heard. So perfectly sequenced that it's hard to believe the songs weren't actually recorded for this end. Search that.

They were very good at that Peel thing.

Gorkys Zygotic Mynci have decided to call it a day and split up.

Richard, Megan, Euros and Pete would like to thank everyone who came to the gigs and bought the records over the years. The re-issues of the first three Gorkys albums - Patio, Tatay, and Bwyd Time - will go ahead as planned and will be released before late 2006.

:-(

This is shit news, first band break up I've been upset about in ages!

And slightly bizarrely, it's currently the number 2 story on the BBC online entertainment news page. Hmm.

Actually, Spinal Tap was at the forefront.

"I say: oren, mefus a chadno!"

We were listening to something the other day (not sure what it was exactly) from when they were really really young where one of their dads comes in at the end of a song and yells at them for the noise. It was great.

Hahaha, I'm listening to that very collection (Patio) and waiting for that moment.

"Keep the noise DOWN."

That's it! It's so funny.

"That's your last warning, it does not need to be that loud. Especially the bass!"

Hahaha, yes! Damn noisy bass guitars.

That's kinda awesome.. I wanna hear.

Patio's kind of awful. Or it was last time I listened to it. Tatay through to Spanish Dance Troupe all great, and the two (or three?) after that have their moments.

Whatever happened to the Ankst-era reissues (I guess they fell out of the back of whatever happened to Sanctuary records)?

Last night, out of the blue I dreamt that someone was asking me what this band's name translated as. I spent a good deal of time racking my brain trying to remember and came up with nothing.

Gorky's Zygotic Monkey.

Let's Get Together (In Our Minds) = best thing they ever did.

I remember seeing them support The Fall - Merched Yn Neud Gwallt Eu Gilydd (Girls Doing Each Other's Hair) was either out or just about to come out. They were all really young and they were utterly fantastic. That 7" probably remains my favourite thing they've done.

Liked Tatay as well, and I have a sentimental fondness for Fresher Than the Sweetness in Water.

I saw Euros Childs play a bunch of new songs on Sunday, he seems to be trying to reinvent himself as a kind of Welsh indie John Shuttleworth

My favourite of what I've heard is "Barafundle", which sort of captures all of their early to late ideas and affectations meeting each other head on - so you get folk and pop and psych and garagey rock and weird wizard stuff.

So OTM. I really need to get some more Gorky's on my itunes - I think all I have on there right now is Bwyd Time. I like the schizo/wizardy & pastoral sides pretty much evenly & think both are represented best by the If Fingers Were Xylophones & The Blue Trees eps respectively.

I saw them live once, in 2003 or so, & there were literally about 20 people there. I felt bad for Euros for all the usual unheralded genius-denied-proper-appreciation reasons, but the poor attendance didn't phase the band b/c they played an excellent set which culminated in a 20+ minute epic closing performance of "In the Heart of Kentucky!"

"the blue trees" is so, so impressively beautiful. i'm really happy that i discovered this band when i did (like a week ago), 'cause listening to the blue trees as the summer's winding down is perfect, man.

besides this i have only heard bwyd time and patio. bwyd time is more consistently hilarious (i mean, it's booty time) while the humour in patio is imagining this band of welsh kids playing these fucked-up noisy jams, and then their parents come in and yell at them to turn it down lol. but i prefer patio for its garage-y rocking-ness, even though i am more glad that the evolved into making beautiful folk music than i would be if they had continued being a rock band.

can't wait to finish listening to every album by this band, though. they are fantastic.

btw found this searching for a gorky's vs. ween thread.

I saw them several times, I had at least 3 of their albums, and the only song that pops into my head when I think about them is "Stood on Gold".

God it really is Gorky's time isn't it? I think I bought "How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart" just as I was moving into my third house (and year) at university, and the memories associated with that fantastic place and year and the friends I had made are immovable fromt his record.

"the blue trees" is so, so impressively beautiful. - otm

marc, I think you'd really enjoy Barafundle & Spanish Dance Troupe - both of those have a really good mix of their haunting, folky side & the bizarro psych-rock stuff.

Sad to see that one of my favorite songs of theirs, "Mow The Lawn" gets short shrift above. I hear it as a kind of absurdo version of the Velvet's "Head Held High." Even has pseudo-Lou yodeling.

that collection of little odds and ends from the early years--20, i think it was called--is really great too.

but yeah i fucking love this band. barafundle was my favorite back in the day, then how i long to feel that summer, but they're all great.

np: hush the warmth

everything said above is true so it is a puzzle that most of euros childs solo material has been missable. the one richard james record i heard(is there more than one?) was also a bit dull. they need to collect john lawrence and megan and get back together, please. ah i just googled him and john lawrence has released an album this year. has anyone heard it? comparisons to csny-groan.

holy fuck what a band

today is my GZM watershed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6v8SHvL7Zs

next week: LJ discovers Ned's Atomic Dustbin

seriously though, How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart is perfect for me today. Bwyd Time and Gorky 5 are also great.

...the
Game
OF
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSS

OTM

I used to think it was "The Game Of Eyes takes place between two people and you have to follow each other around the board".

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSS

The Game Of Eyes takes place between TWO PEOPLE on a BURNING MARBLE BOARD! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! AHHAHAHAHAHA! GEOOOOOORGE!

Bwyd Time rules, probably my favourite of all their albums.

"...you're listening to..."

BWYYYYD TIIIIIME!

i love the reprise later on in the album when it sounds like someone firing lots of GEORGE out of a cannon or something...

The bit at the end of 'The Man With Salt Hair'?

This thread is making me want to listen to this album right now. The Telescope & Bonfire/Man With Salt Hair/Game of Eyes run is one of my favourite parts of an album ever.

I really miss this band.

We don't appear to have talked about the Serpents or the Infinity Chimps on here much...

the social worker tries, she tries
to work out the game of eyes

Good to see some love for this album. It's my favourite of theirs but I don't see it talked about often - not that I see Gorky's talked about enough at all.

Blooooooood Chant....

All those early Ankst single/album covers were ridiculously great. Talk about making a distinct look for a band.

xxxpost:

I dunno, part of me thinks that Gorky's had ran their course by the time they split. Euros used to be prolific and consistently good, now with his solo career he just seems to be prolific... there's the odd good moment here and there though, I think. Richard and John Lawrence were much less prolific songwriters in Gorky's, but they always managed to come up with some sterling stuff... and I can't help but think they lost a little something when John left the band after Gorky 5. They left behind a great deal of good music, though! Even now I'm taken aback by how good some of their B-sides like 'Lucy's Hamper' are.

All those early Ankst single/album covers were ridiculously great. Talk about making a distinct look for a band.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, July 16, 2013 10:21 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally agree... especially the sleeve for 'If Fingers Were Xylophones'!

http://images.45cat.com/gorky-s-zygotic-mynci-if-fingers-were-xylophones-ankst-1.jpg

These all look like they should be the cover of a fantasy series. You know, Susan Cooper or something:

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-379127-1131174104.jpeg

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-565473-1132181513.jpeg

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-565474-1132180566.jpeg

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-2669374-1295807054.jpeg

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-1673794-1295821691.jpeg

http://s.pixogs.com/image/R-576150-1295874982.jpeg

Yeah I remember buying those EP'S/singles, it was so exciting to bring them back home every time. Great artwork and some incredible B-sides. The 20 compilation they put out a few years later is one of the best albums I own, almost every song is a winner.

The fact that at the age of 29, I am actually older than Euros was when the Gorky's put out their final album Sleep/Holiday, just blows my mind!

* deletes loads of new music off iphone *

* loads up all the gorkys for train journey tomorrow *

actually i did listen to Barafundle not long ago and didn't find it half as god as i used to.

think that one hasn't aged so well. how i long... is what they call 'timeless' tho

Half as god is still pretty divine, ho ho. *is killed*

I still like Barafundle a hell of a lot... it's kinda like a halfway house between their Ankst work and the less "mushroomy" stuff they did afterwards. So on one hand you've got the beauty of 'Sometimes The Father Is The Son', and then on the other you've got the delightfully batshit 'Meirion Wyllt'.

The 20 compilation they put out a few years later is one of the best albums I own, almost every song is a winner.

I should get that even though the only songs I'm actually missing are the two from the "Gewn Ni Gorffen?" single.

My god, I'd forgotten how much of a gem 'Methu Aros Tan Haf' was!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5L68LxfuaU

In looking back over this thread I'm reminded of how many random lyric/spoken word bits they had that stick in the brain. They were extremely good for that.

"There's no need to worry!"
"Why's that, Johnny?"

I should get that even though the only songs I'm actually missing are the two from the "Gewn Ni Gorffen?" single.

― Ned Raggett

I think you're only missing the one song which is called 12 Impressionistic Soundscapes, it's hardly essential. I only bought it for that song and just to have all the EP's on one CD.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_oSKYiM8ZM

I thought about getting rid of all the singles as I really don't need them but I want to keep them just for the artwork.

That bit before one of the 'O, Caroline' songs on Tatay where it's all like "For fucks sake, John" is a great moment too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1dgWxAE--w

WHEN YOU HEAR THE CAPTAIN SING
YOU KNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW YOU SHOULD TAKE OFF THAT RING MARY-ANN!

As for their albums, Tatay is still my favourite all the way through. Barafundle and Bwyd Time would be close behind. I've gotten rid of a lot of albums over the last few years, Sleep/Holiday is the only Gorkys I've managed to part with. Walking For Winter and Pretty as a Bee are the only keepers on there.

Tatay is just too much fun, it captures their crazier side with some moments of real beauty so perfectly. Yffordd Oren and Kevin Ayers are two my favourite Gorkys moments.

'Happiness' isn't too bad either, but yeah, totally with you on Sleep/Holiday. Tatay has some wonderful stuff on it... the whole of the 'Anna Apera' suite! ('Gegin Nos' in particular being a favourite).

Oh god, 'Y Ffordd Oren' is absolutely perfect, one of their best ever songs!

Oh yeah Happiness isn't too bad. I think Mow The Lawn was their first and maybe only weak single.

Y Ffordd Oren would join If Fingers Were Xylophones and Game of Eyes in my three favourite Gorky's moments.

Contemplating DJing 'Game of Eyes' at Indietracks now, not sure if it'll work - as good as they are the songs aren't necessarily dance-floor fillers.

I'm obsessed with Cristina despite the awful "magazine-a" rhyme

^^^their best song

balladic twee-prog stalker folk executed with just the right level of inexplicable wonder and beauty

'Christina' is good and all, but wouldn't make the cut in my own personal Gorky's Top 20.

Contemplating DJing 'Game of Eyes' at Indietracks now, not sure if it'll work - as good as they are the songs aren't necessarily dance-floor fillers.

― emil.y, Tuesday, July 16, 2013 11:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'Barbed Wire' might work!

Wouldn't Poodle Rockin' be an obvious choice to put in a DJ set? If Bwyd Time was longer maybe that would work?

I don't like Poodle Rockin so much, tbh.

Nah it's one of those crap singles they did - every album seemed to have a silly rocker on it for a while viz Sweet Johnny, Mow The Lawn.

Pretty As A Bee is so beautiful but the only one I like off Sleep/Holiday. Man, that's a band with a weird career arc

Listening to Bwyd Time now. How were they only teenagers when they made this? Love Oraphis yn Delphie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0sF4--G3sI&index=5&list=PL0778A7FBC4C07F55

Solo but dang this song is my favorite song of all time right now.

https://thealbumwall.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/happy-birthday-barafundle-guest-post.html

Some nice words about one of their best albums.

Their solo careers have been really disappointing.

Have any of you heard John Lawrence's stuff? Oh. My. God.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgAXEjG2VC4

That...I did not expect.

When he left, the band became much less adventurous.

Euros' solo career has just been a string of middling or just ok releases. There have been a couple albums that are almost worth listening to a few times, but he hasn't written a great song in years. I always feel like he just isn't trying, but clearly he just lost it...

I guess you're right but I think he does well with competition and company like most people

I saw them live in 99 or so and they were very good - on the Long to See tour

Jonny was pretty middling, too, and he was matched with an equally (at least at one time in his life) talented partner.

I've listened to everything Euros has done and hold out hope he'll write another great song. He was a fantastic songwriter at one point in his life. Truly unique and wonderful.

With a voice as sweet as honey.

Absolutely love gorkys

How i long still my favourite and an album i listen to after 10 or whatever years

Will have to relisten to barafundle

Barafundle > How I Long > Bwyd Time > Spanish Dance Troupe > Gorky 5 > Other stuff

It's all good though. That John Lawrence thing is pretty out-there huh?

I'm pretty much fine with your ranking, but Patio & Tatay are exceptionally good, as is the odds and sods compilation (which contains many songs from the first couple releases anyway).

I've never been able to get into Sleep/Holiday, but I suspect it isn't as bad as I thought it was. I need to give it another chance. "Mow the Lawn" is just really bad. I always hated those obvious "rock" singles labels seemed to force on bands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHzBOdFIs3g

John's doing his thing, I suppose. I kind of remember enjoying an Infinity Chimps album back in the day.

I honestly think Patio is one of the greatest debut albums ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdPb409jrb4

In its own class.

Patio is one of their best releases, particularly on the CD version with all the extra stuff like 'Dean Ser' and 'Hi ar Gan'

i think i only gave patio a cursory listen... IIRC it's quite garage-rocky compared to the stuff that came after?

Yeah, it's quite garage-rocky in places, particularly on stuff like 'Barbed Wire', but I hear traces of post-punk in there on stuff like 'Dafad Yn Siarad' and 'Sally Webster' ... the psychedelic folk thing wouldn't kick in until Tatay, which is sorta a middle ground between Patio and Bwyd Time.

i just can't believe how young they were when they made all this music. Bwyd Time is an exceptional psychedelic record and they were, what? 6 years old or something when they made it

nice american music club t shirt there

Euros Childs would have been about 20 when Bwyd Time was released. The last Gorky's LP (Sleep/Holiday) was released long before he turned 30.

And he's released nothing of note since. :(

I saw Gorky's live in '97 and thought they were great, then saw them again a couple of years later and thought they were shit. Prime example of "I only like the early stuff" for me unfortunately - I like most of their stuff up to and including Bwyd Time. Barafundle and Gorky 5 are OKish in parts I suppose although haven't listened to either in years. I think Spanish Dance Troupe was the contemporary album for the 2nd time I saw them so never listened to it, they seemed to go from this awesome psychedelic racket to strummy acoustic boredom.

Some of their prettiest songs are on Gorky 5 and Spanish Dance Troupe!

I guess I don't like their pretty songs...

I really like the pretty stuff, but I also love the weird, psychedelic Gorky's. The weirdness seemed to end with John Lawrence's departure...

euros really seems to have followed kevin ayers' career path post gorky's.

I'm impressed that they were all listening to Soft Machine in their teens in the pre-Napster early '90s. It wouldn't be as unusual now, but back in the early '90s it was very unusual.

Hippie parents?

euros really seems to have followed kevin ayers' career path post gorky's.

Bit unfair on Kevin Ayers tbh.

I should look into the Kevin Ayers/Canterbury Scene a bit more. I love this sort of whimsical / psychedelic stuff in general so I can't believe it's taken this long. Is there a good primer or a good album to start with?

Probably his first solo album. I'm think there's been some good KA comps over the years.

Though I seem to remember that Gorkys were particularly fond of "Shooting at the Moon".

The only post-Barafundle GZM album I've heard is The Blue Trees (which I quite liked), I should remedy that. My favourite by far though is that collection of the early EPs.

Love Gorky's. I can really appreciate and at times adore the early weirdness ('The Game of Eyes' is as cool as it is insane and scary) but I'm mostly fond of the pretty stuff. I think that Spanish Dance Troupe is my favourite album (title track probably fave song, along with non-album single 'Young Girls & Happy Endings'). There's great songs to be found throughout their discography, for instance 'Frozen Smile' of Gorky 5 is gorgeous.
Sleep/Holiday is my least fave, I find it rather boring.

Euros solo: I have 'Chops' and 'Miracle Inn', both are nice, there's a particular highlight in the title track of Miracle Inn.

I like the Jonny album a lot too, 'Candyfloss' and 'You Was Me' are excellent.

I remember Gorky 5 getting a bit of flack back in the day. I'm listening to it now and I think it's gorgeous, though a little depressing. It's also one of the only Gorky's albums to feature Euros screaming.

"Sweet Johnny" is one of those aforementioned kind of annoying rockers, though.

I just did a look at Discogs 'cos I realized the voice on a couple tracks didn't sound like Euros, and I found out John Lawrence (the proggy lad up above) did some lead vocals on Gorky 5. I actually really like his voice on this album.

Always wondered why Richard James didn't sing his own song on Barafundle (Sometimes The Father Is The Sun) but always did otherwise

John Lawrence frequently sang lead vocals on GZM songs throught his stint with the band. He wrote 'Softly', 'Not Yet' and 'Tsunami' on Gorky 5. Spanish Dance Troupe is the last LP with Lawrence.

Hippie parents?

euros really seems to have followed kevin ayers' career path post gorky's.

Bit unfair on Kevin Ayers tbh.

― Punnet of the Grapes (Tom D.)

post-'74? i love both ayers and euros, but they both seem to me to be sort of wanderers.

Kevin was definitely erratic, but that's almost part of who he was. I've said it here before but I like all of his albums up to and including "That's What You Get Babe", "Yes We Have No Mañanas" is one of his best albums.

You know I completely forgot I got this last year -- and maybe I've never actually listened to it yet! Free download, 32 bands, at least some of them have to be good:

https://recordiauprin.bandcamp.com/album/iechyd-da-a-tribute-to-gorkys-zygotic-mynci

The "Merched Yn Neud Gwallt Eu Gilydd" cover is by Kliph Scurlock, formerly of The Flaming Lips. He's been involved in like every major Welsh band/artist's thing for the past 2 or 3 years.

i liked the version of "catrin" by the gentle good.

Where there any Lawrence compositions recorded for Spanish Dance Troupe which didn't make the cut after he left the band?

I remember even at the time people were saying "Oh they were better with John Lawrence in the band", even though they had already largely changed direction by Gorky 5

I'm not sure, but I'd guess not. Spanish Dance Troupe was already "in the can" by the time Lawrence left. There was a five month gap between the album being completed and it being released (which is actually pretty standard) and Lawrence left during this period.

Arguably, they were already starting to change direction on Barafundle, which increasingly seems to me to be both a "transitional" record and their most focused work.

Well, of all the solo careers, his is by far the absolute worst, so I'm not sure what did or didn't happen, but I don't think he would've done the band any good in the end.

Richard James is probably the blandest, but he has some pleasant highs.

Euros veers too far into kitsch on almost all of his albums, and the experimental ones are total busts IMO. I think he just rushes his songwriting.

I think with Gorky's it was basically the usual case of the band being greater than the sum of their parts. I reckon if they all collaborated as they did back in the early days of Gorky's, they could come up with something really good.

I've always wondered if perhaps John had contributed some songs to what ended up as SDT because he's completely absent from the writing credits, which seemed otherwise unusual as he was all over the others, to the extent of having three solo compositions on Gorky 5.

Yeah, I always found that unusual too, given that he didn't leave the band until after the LP was completed... it's hard to say what happened there. Either he was going through a dry spell as a songwriter, or he had songs and the band didn't record them for whatever reason - either they didn't fit, or he'd already thought about doing solo stuff. It's hard to say, because not much has really been said about Lawrence's departure.

see, SDT is overall a 'weirder' album than Gorky 5 so the idea that he was the experimental guy sdoesnt really float

and his stuff on Gorky 5 is about the most straightforward he ever did

I listened to Sleep/Holiday recently because of this thread - haven't listened to it for years, but was surprised to find I only dislike 3 songs on it.

Another year, another substandard Euros Childs album. Anyone listen to 'House Arrest' yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNI0WFeiZHI

*sigh*

Those Gorkys albums still remain painfully unaffordable and practically non-existent in LP form. Who can fix this? Also Richard James put out a moody instrumental (synth?) album which I scanned through on bandcamp.

It's near criminal that you can't hear Bwyd Time anywhere other than YouTube. I'd love a reissue

I wonder if there'd be lots of interesting unreleased stuff that could be used for expanded versions. Euros has certainly be very prolific as a solo artist.

*been very prolific

i’ve loved a lot of those Euros albums - his recent all covers album was especially good. It’s just prohibitively expensive to order the LPs in the states.