GAMES

This is an interesting rarity, an electronic music album by a British musician but released on an obscure German label and sounding pretty much like the early TANGERINE DREAM and KLAUS SCHULZE. Until two further albums in the 2010's, this also was Mick Clarke's only solo release; he has participated in several London-based underground bands such as Naked Lunch which was influenced by Gary Numan, Kraftwerk and Ultravox, in the early 80's. [As a side note: a better known Mick Clarke is a blues guitarist, and actually Discogs seems to list four musicians of this name.]

The brief album Games has a side-long track and three shorter pieces on the second side. 'Spectro' (17:22) starts in an eerie way. The sound in the foreground -- fading away around the third minute -- is like pieces of glass jingling against each other, like windchimes but sharper, and from the background gradually comes to the fore a frail and moody continuous synthline, sonically slightly reminiscent of the one in 'Shine on You Crazy Diamond'. Things evolve slowly like with Klaus Schulze's lengthy pieces. Later there are also some bubbly synth sounds and sequencers in the spirit of Tangerine Dream. The piece gets sonically closer to TD album such as Phaedra (1974) and Stratosfear (1976).

The 8½ -minute 'Walls of the Night' is a nightmarish soundscape. I think VCS-3 is one of the central instruments here, and for a while the piece reminds me of 'On the Run' (on Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon). The collaborative guitarist John Carrick joins for the latter half, but his playing is closer to Edgar Froese's in Tangerine Dream than to David Gilmour's, so we stay firmly in the Berlin School Krautrock realms.

The two final pieces are short and less spectacular. 'Time to Remember' fades away at the time when it has begun to sound more interesting. 'Time Is Now' is only slightly better, basically a duet for Tangerine Dream -like bubbling synths and a gently pulled (nylon?) guitar. The album as a whole is a well done pastiche for the Berlin School idols, beginning with its strongest and longest pieces but obviously running out of steam before the half of an hour has passed. Good, but non-essential.