01	Futilist's Lament						05:16
	02	Death Warmed Up						09:07
	03	Pushed, But Not Forgotten						04:43
	04	Walking Down Their Outlook						04:55
	05	Missing Out						09:38
	06	Nowhere						05:56

(p) 1969 Liberty Records (c) 1994 Repertoire Records

Roger Hadden - drums
Tony Hill - guitars
Peter Pavli - bass
Simon House - violin

Илья Прутов: Одна из первых арт-роковых групп, довольно таинственная и загадочная, ее альбомы долгое время не переиздавались, и доступны на CD стали сравнительно недавно. Винилы же - мечта коллекционера,- стоят баснословно дорого. Стиль уникален - смесь фолка, психоделии и чрезвычайно тяжелого хард-рока, вероятно, - в конце шестидесятых эта группа имела вообще самое тяжелое звучание, Cream, Led Zeppelin, и даже Deep Purple звучали тогда намного легче и играли намного проще! "Sea Shanties" - это матросские песни. Действительно настроение альбома несколько "морское", этакое пиратски-разухабистое, хотя некоторые фрагменты звучат просто чудовищно мрачно и безысходно. Death Warmed Up - длинный психоделический джем с убийственной гитарой, тяжеленной ритм-секцией и….вполне фолковыми скрипичными партиями - даже и по нынешним временам это звучит свежо и очень необычно. Гипнотическая, захватывающая музыка! Увы, не знаю, кто именно был вокалистом в группе - скорее всего, это осталось неизвестным, но голос вокалиста поразительно похож на голос Джима Моррисона! Вот только музыка намного более тяжелая и интересная, нежели у Doors. Блюзовые корни группы тоже чувствуются, но они не столь явны, как у других ранних прогрессивнх групп, например, у несколько схожих по стилю May Blitz. Влияние же английского фолка несомненно. Повторюсь - звучание группы уникально, аналогов практически нет, широко используется диссонансные созвучия - редкость по тем временам! Записан альбом довольно просто, без особых студийных ухищрений, честно говоря - можно было записать и получше. JОбщее впечатление - брутальная, тяжелая, изобилующая диссонансами, но очень симпатичная музыка Как справедиво замечено в GEPR - "1969's Sea Shanties is a monster album". Значение этого альбома можно сравнить, пожалуй, лишь с "In The Court Of The Crimson King" King Crimson, появившимся чуть позже. Влияние High Tide чувствуется и у Hawkwind, что, в общем-то, и неудивительно - ведь скрипач и клавишник Саймон Хаус позднее играл и там. Также Саймон Хаус - участник первой неоклассической группы Third Ear Band. Возможно, в какой-то мере High Tide - предтечи RIO! Явное влияние High Tide чувствется у RIO/джаз-роковой группы Boud Deun, и у Zeuhl-групп, и даже у…блэк-металлических групп, таких, как Ved Buens Ende, например. Определенные параллели есть и с немецкими краутрокерами, такими как Can, но музыка High Tide намного более структурирована и осмыслена, чем "свободные наркотические заплывы" Can и других краутрокеров. В любом случае - рекомендую альбом всем любителям "чего-нибудь потяжелее, помрачнее и поглючнее"!

Оценка: 9 из 10



TOCP-7801
Japanese CD
Masaitoh Collection series
Emi Japan 1993



High Tide - "Sea Shanties" (1969)
The first album by this British group sounds like early Hawkwind, but without all the space stuff. The music is quite raw and heavy, but the violin playing of Simon House and the complexity of the songs made them more than just a average hard-rock band. My favourite track is "Death Warmed Up", an incredible intense and energetic jam with great riffs. "Pushed, But Not Forgotten" and "Nowhere" are the group from their more controlled side, and shows that they have some great melodic sense too. And the opening track "Futilist's Lament" sounds almost like classic Black Sabbath. This album may not fit into everyone's definition of the word "progressive", but it's a very good album anyway. And as long as the music is good, then I personally don't give a shit about what kind of music it is.



High Tide - Sea Shanties (1969)

High Tide were a by now long forgotten British hard-rock/psych group that played heavy, fuzzed-out metallic progressive rock. It's taken me awhile to really get into Sea Shanties, but this is definitely an essential album of the then embryonic British progressive scene. High Tide plays heavy psychedelic rock with flailing distorted guitars, wailing violin and deep crooning vocals. A good comparison I've heard tossed around is to imagine Jim Morrison fronting Black Sabbath. While that's a good starting point for their sound, High Tide is much more energetic than Sabbath, generally more upbeat and with much more of a tendency to "jam". Not to mention the fact that High Tide also features some fairly frenetic violin playing as a major staple of its sound. In fact, High Tide might best be known for its violinist, one Simon House, who would later go on to greater notoriety with Hawkwind and David Bowie. Incidentally, early Hawkwind circa In Search of Space has a similar vibe at points. In short, this album just rocks. Yeah, it's a little sloppy and not particularly complex, but you'd be hard pressed to find much to top this as far as sheer energy and power.

I'm not sure exactly when this came out, but being sometime in 1969, there's a good chance that High Tide's debut predated Black Sabbath's first album, rendering Sea Shanties one the earliest incarnations of "heavy metal" as we know it. "Futilist's Lament" kicks things off by simply clobbering you with a sheer wall of sound, while "Death Warmed Up" and "Missing Out" feature some mind blowing jams and overpowering interplay between Hill's soaring guitar and House's frantic and unrelenting violin work. "Pushed, But Not Forgotten" and "Nowhere" are both more vocally oriented, seeing the band drift into a more mellow, Doors-type vibe. Overall, this is essential early heavy psych/prog, occasionally drifting into heavy metal territory, with great vocals and tremendous emotional power. Sea Shanties is an album that truly kicks ass on an extremely visceral level, and is an essential part of the early progressive rock puzzle. - Greg Northrup [March 2001]




High Tide - Sea Shanties

Member: ffroyd - 7/3/03

Have you ever had one of those albums that you get a delayed reaction on? I've had this one for several months now and although I enjoyed it enough, I hadn't really flipped over it until just recently. The main reason I originally picked this one up was because Simon House, of Hawkwind fame, played on it. I've always liked his playing with the Hawks and his subsequent solo and collaborative work but this album puts his style in an entirely new light for me.

The year was 1969, and the violin was not exactly a common instrument in rock music yet. Rising out of the ashes of British band The Misunderstood, High Tide consisted of Tony Hill on guitar and vocals, Simon House playing electric violin, Pete Pavli on Bass and Roger Hadden on drums. Most bands since then that have featured a violinist will also have keyboards to augment the sound but you don't miss them at all here. Simon's playing can be very frantic at times and it's often very easy to lose track of what he's doing, it sounds very much like a second guitar. There's also a nicer classical moments here that wouldn't be as evident on his later work with Hawkwind.

Although the violin plays a very big part in the music here, I can't neglect to mention the guitar playing of Tony Hill. He has a very heavily distorted sound, obviously very influenced at the time by Jimi Hendrix and Cream, but his playing is much wilder. The album's opener "Futilist's Lament" bursts out of the gate with an intense amount of energy and that intensity lasts through the whole album. About the only time the assault lets up is during some eerie moments on "Pushed, But Not Forgotten" which also mostly ends up being very heavy and chaotic. Although the rhythm section doesn't stand out as much, they are worth mentioning. Roger Hadden has a very busy untamed style that brings Keith Moon to mind. Pete Pavli's bass playing is very tasteful as he provides an excellent counterbalance to the guitar and violin parts. An interesting side note: Pete would later go on to become a studio musician and appears in Michael Moorcock's Deep Fix band on the album New World's Fair.

About the only drawback of this music for me is the vocals. This is probably why it took me so long to appreciate this album. Tony Hill sings very much like Jim Morrison, it seems most of the time that he's trying to emulate him. He doesn't have the range or the emotion of Morrison but his voice does have a frighteningly weird quality that gets very interesting. I can't really complain about the voice that much because it does work very well within the music.

I had high expectations for this CD when I first picked it up and when I listened to it a few times I was a bit disappointed but I kept playing to it and eventually developed a very positive opinion of it. Sea Shanties is one of the heaviest, if not the heaviest album to come out of the sixties and also was one of the first to introduce the violin as an important part of a progressive rock band.


c2001 - 2003 Progressive Ears