MUSIC FROM MACBETH

This was the soundtrack to a Roman Polanski of Macbeth, from back when you could collaborate with Polanski without having to consciously overlook his sex crime conviction. Whereas Third Ear Band's self-titled album found them expanding the sound of Alchemy into long, dreamy suites, the requirements of soundtrack work meant they had to condense their music down into shorter, tighter compositions.

The end result sounds an awful lot like a prototype for Univers Zero. That isn't something you might expect given the musical influences that feed into their work - medieval folk, traditional Indian music, a touch of psychedelia here, a larger dab of free jazz and avant-garde classical there - but between the dark atmosphere, the "chamber rock" instrumentation, and the unconventional approach, it very much feels like a prototype for the sort of territory that Univers Zero, Art Zoyd, and Present would eventually explore.