TOM PENAGUIN – Beginnings
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Nostalgia is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, there is a concrete risk of romanticising the past and thus closing your eyes and ears to the present and future. But on the other hand, music genres from the 1970s may have offered a more colourful range than what is currently popular among the younger generation. When it comes to reviving vintage rock sounds, a lot has been done and even overdone, be it hard rock, mellotron infused prog rock or spacier Floydian sounds. And yet, lately, there has been a strong comeback from the often overlooked Canterbury sound, which in itself was always a whimsical tangent off the more classic prog sounds. British artist Zopp may be the most known among the new advocates of Canterbury prog, but especially France has its fair share of proponents: Aquaserge, Fulguromatic and of course Tom Penaguin. A year after the release of his self-titled debut longplayer, he is already back with his second album Beginnings. The title suggests that this is not an album of new material, but rather an archival collection of tracks he recorded between 2012 and 2020. This means that most of the tracks have been recorded when Tom Penaguin was still a teenager, and considering what teenagers listen to today, Tom Penaguin must have been a true outsider among his peers. He warns that the recording quality is not optimal, and while that is true, it is perfectly listenable from beginning to end, and you wouldn’t even notice that these songs come from different sessions and even years. The opener Long Piece No1 must have been recorded when Tom Penaguin was about eighteen years old, but it sounds like a lost masterpiece from early 1970s Soft Machine, although with lots of electric guitar. Fact is, the live played drums are maybe a bit weak in the mix, but the interplaying between guitar and keyboards is just phenomenal, and actually quite unbelievable, coming from such a young musician. The following four tracks are shorter, running between three and eight minutes, and also have a lot of highlights. Ominous Bathtub In April is a master class in melancholy, and its final one and a half minutes reminds me of former and very early Genesis guitarist Anthony Phillips’s solo material. Two And A Half shows off Tom Penaguin’s guitar playing which has a strong jazz fusion influence. The Tap Dancing Millipede Grew Tired’s guitar sounds like Jimmy Page on Houses Of The Holy. Several Clocks is another fine vintage prog song with some flute parts giving it a folksy pastoral feeling. The album ends with two quarter hour tracks. Hamburg’s Heaviest Pebble is an astonishingly heavy rocking track that sounds like a mix between Soft Machine, Gong and Mahavishnu Orchestra. Long Piece No1 Five Years Later is another take at the opener, recorded five years later in better studio settings. The more focused approach makes this an entirely different listening experience, although both tracks are great. There are a couple of interesting facts to point out. There are no early versions of songs that found their way to the debut album. Instead we get all new “old” material. It also needs to be clarified that back then Tom Penaguin had already Canterbury influences, but there were also many more genres that found their way into his sound, as you can read in the preceding paragraph. Beginnings, which sounds far better than the liner notes would have us believe, is also nearly twice as long as the rather short debut album. It is much more than a collection of things that could have been. Beginnings stands as an album of its own, offering incredibly varied instrumental progressive rock that is an important addition to Tom Penaguin’s discography. Fans of his debut album will not be disappointed, as won’t be listeners of 1970s prog, fusion and Canterbury. |
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7 songs |
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68:10 minutes |
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***** **** |
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Genre: instrumental progressive rock Label: áMARXE Released: 23rd May 2025 |
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