UK

Like the Real Madrid that David Beckham signed for, UK was a collection of hand picked galacticos that their respective employers hoped would trample the opposition underfoot and lift all the silverware on offer. Sadly for Becks, he won precisely squat in Spain but UK confounded the theory that a team is more than the sum of its parts on this stunning eponymous release. Whereas Los Merengues resembled a Frankenstein in shorts, their musical equivalents played with a verve, restraint and panache that flies in the face of both holistic wisdom and the prevailing Zeitgeist of 1978.

Progressive music is littered with supergroup pileups along its arterial highways, to wit Blind Faith, Paice Ashton Lord, The Firm, 801, Beck Bogert Appice, Badger, Tin Machine, and perhaps most pertinent to this review: Asia. The latter always struck me as a family saloon production model UK, with the addition of some nice comfy upholstery, a drinks holder (Wetton), a GPS that couldn't be overridden by its drivers, furry dice, depersonalised plates and some dangerously balding tyre fitters prone to pumping in too much air. I mean come on, actually stooping to the name Asia just to ingratiate themselves to a target audience - Is there a supermarket chain called Treats For Fatboy R'US?

That said, this album is miraculous on at least two fronts: at the time of its release prog was treated with all the restraint extended to a bouquet at a greenfly convention while the music contained herein is perhaps the finest realised by any proggers at the 'spiky' end of the 70's. While Yes were being pelted for Tormato, ELP were having sand kicked in their faces on Love Beach, Genesis were shrinking in inverse proportion to the Collins ego and Floyd's inflated boars were negotiating a very low wall, UK appear to have sneaked out this magnificent offering to very little fanfare. Messrs Wetton, Jobson, Holdsworth and Bruford require little endorsement from this reviewer given that their talents have been illuminated from within King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Yes, Roxy Music, Family, Curved Air and Soft Machine. I do have to confess alas that Holdsworth's playing has always left me completely unmoved on anything he contributed to prior or since, as I find his tone, articulation and phrasing utterly predictable and one dimensional.(I guess it's my loss but his legato guitar style is indistinguishable from a synthesizer with a single patch memory to my ears)

The technique of splicing radio-friendly choruses between longer sections of challenging and chromatic instrumental writing is used to great effect throughout this album. For those of a cynical inclination (and let's face it, I am) this could come across as crassly calculating but such are the effortlessly seamless thrills on offer here, I am delighted to throw these charges out of court. Case dismissed m'lud.The listener's short term memory is filled with nagging pop hooks that are very hard to dislodge, while at a deeper level, the subconscious idles patiently in assimilating the instrumental wizardry until such time as it re-emerges on your way home from work on the train as erm... musical Tourettes (much to the consternation of your fellow commuters)

Dng nat gump da goolie bizzy kup

Are you feeling all-right son?

Oh yes, sorry. I have a rare medical condition....and I think I've missed my stop.

I have often bemoaned the borderline gauche aspect of many prog lyrics but here, the lads do at least display some genuine and mature secular concerns. There is a particularly British melancholy at work, which shares with that of Porcupine Tree and Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, the articulation of a quiet despair at the futility of a shrinking youthful idealism in the face of both impervious reality and the ageing process. These are transparently not rugger drinking songs as they deal with a confrontation that prog just kept putting off until it was too late: The Yes men were yesterday's men exiled forever to a penal institution perched on the forbidden rock of the island of BOF. Kudos to UK for recognising this was real and it was happening now.

Claustrophobic British paranoia, self loathing, caustic bile, alienation, the insidiousness of the class system? Step right up and climb aboard the sceptic isle:

Are you one of mine who can sleep with one eye open wide? Agonizing psychotic solitary hours to decide Reaching for the light at the slightest noise from the floor Palms of hands perspire heart goes leaping at a knock from the door

Rich and powerful ascend complicated bends to be free To indulge in what they will and jaded thrill or fantasy Shuttered windows that belie all stifled cries from within and prying eyes are blind to proceedings of the kind that begin in the dead of night

This is Selling England by the Pound 5 years hence written by people who actually have credible material concerns (unlike Genesis, but at least Peter G bailed much earlier than most as he guessed correctly Prog was dead in the water) James Callaghan's tenure as British Prime Minister had been marked by crippling industrial action instigated by a trade union movement he dared not alienate for fear of losing their buttressing support. Considering 'Sunny Jim' was followed by the post-modern witch of Thatcher and her 'greed for all' manifesto, the hopelessness imbued in Wetton's delivery is remarkably prescient.

The instrumental writing cleverly imitates the neurosis that the lyrics describe with punning use of compound meters, unresolved or tense harmonic denouements plus shed-loads of fiery spleen from Wetton, who has rarely sounded this grumpy. Therein lies the paradox of much great art: it often exists in spite of, or is the reaction to controls designed to stifle such sedition and dissent. What would rock music sound like from a utopian paradise whose citizens are free from every conceivable material want? Like a neutered Dream Theater probably (You mean they covered material from this album? Whoops... but how haplessly and laughably ironic, being tantamount to a housebreaking of intellectual property)

Robert Fripp was correct. Progressive Rock at the outset fulfilled a need of its audience. Thereafter the music industry's vampiric nature had to create a need amongst that same demographic to sustain the emergent monster's cash and blood flows. By 1978 the tanned balding prog beast was but one more Dirty White Mother from the bloated corpse in the swimming pool. It seems a great shame that UK are portrayed by Thatcher's children as typical of the reviled genre as this album represents one of the very few avenues that the proggers could have steered into to escape the bloodthirsty mob of punks on their trail. Instead, they cut their hair, trimmed their track lengths, shrank their ambition and targeted an audience credulous enough to believe that the Kalahari Kaisers are an ice hockey team (The Far East - Selling England by the Yen)

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