CHANGES

Imagine Chicago, Soft Machine and Nucleus involved in a crazed, LSD-fuelled jamming session and what you have is the blistering jazz-rock sound of British outfit Catapilla. Issued in 1971, Catapilla's self-titled debut remains one of the great lost British prog relics of the early-seventies, an album positively dripping with the kind of thick hazy atmosphere that could only have been cooked up in the heady days of the late- sixties. Featuring just four songs and capped off by the extraordinary twenty-four minute long epic 'Embryonic Fusion', Catapilla made Miles Davis seem tame in comparison, with lead vocalist Anna Meek squawking, howling and hollering her way through the group's hundrerd-mile-an-hour mixture of hard-hitting rock, fiery jazz breaks and genial lysergic madness without ever pausing for breath. As debut's go 'Catapilla' really was something, yet predictably the group failed to make any kind of commercial headway, instead releasing just one more album before calling it a day. That album would be 1972's 'Changes', a less intense follow-up housed in an intricate novelty sleeve that also failed to chart. Now, of course, both albums are worth a small fortune on the collector's circuit - this writer has seen a copy of 'Catapilla' on sale for £500 - and both have developed a deserved cult following over the years. Although it lacks the frenzied pace and burning jazz aesthetic of it's predecessor, 'Changes' does, however, still find time to both rock out and chill out, ambling loosely along the jazz-rock divide without ever igniting in the same incredible way as the group's debut. Like that debut, 'Changes' features just four tracks, with the laconic late-night pulse of opener of 'Reflections' backed by the skilfully-played 'Charing Cross', the dark and menacing fusion fuzz of 'Thank Christ For Geoge', and last of all, the jazz-drenched tones of 'It Could Happen To Me'. STEFAN TURNER, STOKE NEWINGTON, 2014