MOONSONGS

Bob Drake and Mike Johnson's THINKING PLAGUE may have gone under the radar with their debut "A Thinking Plague" in 1984, but garnered enough positive criticism by the prog community to warrant continuing on. They immediately began to record material the following year but many changes were afoot. Firstly, the dynamic duo disbanded all the members on board and started from scratch. The new lineup included the addition of vocalist Suzanne Lewis and keyboardist Eric Jacobson as well as drummer Mark Fuller who technically joined in on some of the tracks of the debut.

Another big change was that the basement of an old slaughterhouse which they called The Packing House Studios was no longer available and the band began to enter various low budget studios to carry forth their mission. Work was slow and meticulous and it took two long years before the sophomore album MOONSONGS was released but it was this second offering where the band proved themselves to be a major powerhouse in the world of avant-prog with a more refined and distinct style that displayed the unique mix of Zappa styled orchestral arrangements teased out with aspects of folk, jazz, classical, rock and extreme experimentalism.

Known at the time as prog rock collage music, THINKING PLAGUE found new creative ways to mix and manipulate chamber rock string sections, free improvisation, tribal percussion and eerie atmospheric mood settings. While the band was official a quintet, a few session musicians provided the occasional alto and soprano sax. MOONSONGS basically takes the debut's approach and expands its horizons into more complex and darker pastures with contributions from more band members including singer / songwriter / vocalist Susanne Lewis who also created the cover artwork.

It seems to me that at its heart, THINKING PLACE is really an anarchy-punk band that just happened to be more musically inclined. Tracks like the opening "Warheads" echoes a dark disrespect for the war machine through a series of sound collages that initiate with a rather punk-like guitar riffing that drifts off into ethereal rolls of sound punctuated by an off-kilter jazzified percussive beat. While the opener offers hints of the debut album, the following "Etude For Combo" finds a fully functioning band embracing the height of avant-garde weirdness as the angular rhythms, time signature rich grooves and overall esoteric mood swings are in full regalia and thus taking the adventurous antics of the debut into the stratosphere of possibilities.

"Collarless Fog That One Day Soon" is a completely psycho-ambient parade into the subconscious and is basically a three minute plus interlude that debuts the band's ability to create long drawn out nerve racking atmospheres that serve as connective tissue between tracks. The following "Inside Out" follows the other-worldly effect with Lewis' vocals emerging from an ambient soup that sounds like it was beamed to the Earth from an extraterrestrial race in a galaxy far, far away. The track that cemented THINKING PLAGUE as one of the 80s greatest progressive contributions is the fifteen and a half minute closing title track which Johnson perfectly describes as a "tribal-pagan-environmental-anti-materialistic avant-rock ritual." While beginning as if dropped down in a pygmy ceremony in the jungles of Africa, wends and winds around the classic THINKING PLAGUE universe of ever- changing compositional weirdness and goes full circle by the same tribal percussion that began the journey.

With their sophomore album, THINKING PLAGUE became an underground sensation in the prog and art rock world and with two uniquely bizarre albums under their belt found themselves touring with Sonic Youth. MOONSONGS perfectly picks up from the debut and expands the musical lexicon in myriad directions by taking the Henry Cow angularism, Zappa-esque jazz-rock, Dagmar Krause slightly off vocals and countless other experimental features to bizarre new heights. The band perfectly mixed their rock sensibilities in a sea of genre bending possibilities in a very restrained manner that allowed the elements to come and go as was organically ordained and nothing really feels forced in any way.

MOONSONGS was released in 1986 on cassette only on the Endemic label and then the following year on vinyl LOP on Dead Man's Curve Records. The album has never seen another release in its own right but together with the debut "A Thinking Plague," has been remastered and released in its entirety on the twofer compilation "Early Plague Years." This second release is utterly brilliant and should not be missed by fans of complex avant-prog that takes liberties beyond your wildest dreams. The first two THINKING PLAGUE albums are quite unique in comparison to their other albums that follow. They are equally art rock as they are progressive avant-garde and capture the spirit of not only the Henry Cow club but also display some of that Talking Heads new wave and punk rock spirit. An equally dynamic second offering not to be missed.