CUTTING BOTH WAYS

An oasis for Canterbury fans in the midst of the otherwise barren 1980s, Phil Miller's Cutting Both Ways features a veritable who's who of Canterbury. Balancing the album between modern-sounding releases with up-to-date synthesisers in the company of Dave Stewart and Barbara Gaskin and more traditional jazzy Canterbury fare with the help of Elton Dean, Hugh Hopper, Pip Pyle and Peter Lerner, the real trick here is how Miller manages to make these differing approaches sound so natural next to each other. Phil might be "cutting both ways" here, but each way sounds like a natural outgrowth of the other, yielding one of the most original and interesting Canterbury releases since the 1970s.