I’ve been having great fun digitizing some old basement tapes from 1976-1977. In the case of this particular bunch, I mean that literally — several were recorded in the basement of the family home.
These are samplings from 1976, from the period before the band “Auspex” was formed. More on that in a future post. Some notes on each track appear below the player. Each track is one or two minutes long at most, in order that you should not become bored…

Song notes and credits:
These are all multi-track recordings, made on an old Akai reel-to-reel… We had to “bounce” tracks to create overdubs, whereby some quality is lost from the previous take. That said, these are fairly bright recordings for the most part.
Aftaglid (clip) – This is a loose cover of a Steve Hillage (Gong) track. This one was recorded at Monte’s apartment. Somebody had some nifty finger cymbals, or something, which is what I’m playing. A fun riff to stretch out on.

Bob Daniel – percussion, recorder
Monte Horton – keyboards
Steve Vickery – guitar

Space Blues (clip) – Starts with a section based on a nifty 7/4 bass riff by Steve Vickery, moving into a more traditional blues structure in the second half.

Bob Daniel – drums, Roland Space Echo (!)
Monte Horton – electric guitar
Steve Vickery – bass guitar

Earth Blues (complete) – No overdubs on this one. I show off my mad recorder skills, using a singing-while-playing technique I stole from Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) who in turn stole it from Roland Kirk. I remember this is the one my mother liked.

Bob Daniel – recorder
Monte Horton – acoustic guitar

Time for All (clip) – Cheesy title. This one is in three sections (gots to have sections if you wanna be progtastic). Starts with a quirky 10/8 section, then into a brisk 6/8 thing, ending in a lovely 7/8 theme. Nice acoustic playing from Monte.

Bob Daniel – drums, “string machine” (poor man’s mellotron)
Monte Horton – acoustic guitar, synth leads

Voyage (clip) – A stately, bombastic 3/4 march of doom in the grand progressive rock tradition, or one of them. Originally called “Voyage/Arrival” but I omitted the second half — sometimes the journey is more important (and way less cheesy) than the arrival.

Bob Daniel – drums, string machine
Monte Horton – electric guitar

Mental Midget (complete) – This is a really fun number, named for its obvious debt to Gentle Giant, whose bags we were not fit to carry, but we could dream. In an intentional mind-f*ck, the jerky 4/4 of the opening reveals itself, when the tambourine changes, as a brisker, triplet feel with some nice mod-ring synth licks from Monte. The middle section is a peculiar pattern of alternating bars of 11/8 and 14/8 which had to be my doing. A rather splendid drum break (if I do say so) leads to the final section, a bouncy triplet-feel 4/4 that carryies the fun to the end.

Bob Daniel – drums, percussion, keyboards
Monte Horton – electric guitar, keyboards

Thanks for listening!! Your gratuitous praise, or your harsh, uncalled-for criticisms, are welcomed.