The Green Telescope – Andy Kershaw Session 23.01.86 / Blueboy – Deux / The Loft – “Dr. Clarke” b/w “Got A Job”

After branching further out of apparent comfort zones across 2024 in terms of content and format manoeuvres, Precious Recordings pivots once again, around the turn of the New Year, with three self-set-boundary-breaking releases.

At the front of the assessment queue comes the first offering from the London-based label’s foraging through the Andy Kershaw archive shelves in the BBC tape vaults, with a January 1986 session from The Green Telescope — Edinburgh’s short-lived precursors to The Thanes – as a ten-inch EP.

Recorded in Stockport’s less-glamourous-than-Maida Vale Yellow 2 Studios, these four resolutely raw and retro-minded cuts feel like somewhat warped outtakes from Elektra Records’ legendary Nuggets anthology. With singer-guitarist Lenny Helsing’s tones obliquely melding Mick Jagger, Bryan Ferry and The Triffids’ David McComb upfront, much of the musical heavy lifting comes via Bruce Lyall’s driving Ray Manzarek-at-the-fairground organ lines and the crate-digging-inspired material.

Thus, through the caterwauling clang of the Helsing-penned “Who Knows?”, the swelling primordial Pink Floydisms of the Caretakers Of Deception-covering “X+Y+3”, the Sonics-infused strutting of the also-Helsing-penned “Try To” and the rousing call-and-response acid-garage stomp through The Driving Stupid’s “Horror Asparagus Stories”, the four gathered ultra-short salvos burst from speakers in satisfyingly twisted and wiry fashion.

Taken as a whole, this is a curiously compelling educational exercise in musical history hybridising.

Next up is the enterprise’s second-ever single of new material, from reborn Sarah Records veterans Blueboy. Following on from the still-fresh and adorable A / B-side partnering of the preceding One seven-inch on Precious, the numerically-anointed Deux leans even more heavily into the band’s shoegaze side.

“Deux” itself is a remarkably radiant and soaring number (no pun intended), imagining something that Lush that might have dropped from the Robin Guthrie-produced Spooky for being just a bit ‘too pop’ at the time. Contrastingly, the wordless flipside of “Fading From View” swims into murkier drone-suffused waters, like an evocative electro-acoustic Slowdive detour.

For those that just can’t get enough of the awesome A-side, the bonus digital download delivers a significantly different and worthwhile “Popkiss version”, with less effects-masked vocals and a rougher rhythm section strata, to show off the song’s melodically rich and malleable qualities.

Based on this latest outing, a full-length Blueboy studio return really can’t come soon enough to these ears.

Last but not least is another non-archival seven-inch artefact, from similarly rebooted Creation veterans The Loft, which sustains the Precious relationship that began with a recently dispensed Marc Riley and Gideon Coe BBC session EP.

A-side “Dr. Clarke” provides a preview taste of the forthcoming Everything Changes Everything Stays The Same LP on Tapete Records, which unapologetically displays some collective Revolver worship, down to the ringing George Harrison guitar strokes, the obvious lyrical nods to the John Lennon-worded “Doctor Robert” and its group vocal interactions.

Exclusive B-side “Got A Job” is a little more conventionally Loft-like in its core structure, but adds in (Untitled)-era Byrdsian Americana twang and some whimsical Kinks-style wordplay to the melting pot.

Whether this pairing of tracks gives a clear indication of what to fully expect on the imminent long-player remains to be heard, but taken as a standalone affair in the interim, this is an amiable reward for patiently-waiting fans of The Loft.

-Adrian-