NGC-4594 ‎– Skipping Through The Night

 

1 Colors 4:27

2 Negative Zone 4:43

3 Take Off Your Feet 2:01

4 Imagination Dead Imagine 6:21

5 Bloomin' 2:19

6 Out To Play 3:10

7 Forever Gone 6:12

8 Sea Ballad 4:34

9 It's Called Love 2:28

10 Where Are You Coming From? 3:58

11 Nova Express 5:19

12 So Bright 3:22

13 Going Home 2:57

14 Skipping Through The Night 2:54

NGC-4594

Bass, Vocals – Danny Shanok

Drums, Vocals – Bob De Vos

Electric Piano, Vocals – David Bliss

Flute [Electrified], Harmonica – Minty Collins

Guitar, Vocals – Chas Mirsky

Liner Notes – Gray Newell

Organ [Farfisa] – Steve Starger

Producer – Dick Corby

Research, Liner Notes – Max Waller

Замечательная группа,один из забытых алмазов 60-х.в духе тех славных лет !👌

Рецензия с дискоса  

Putting this album under wraps after it’s completion in 1967, and but one single “Skipping Through The Night” / “Going Home” released on Smash Records NGC-4594, most of the world have never heard of NGC-4594 or their heavily oriented pop acid soaked tunes with a deeply buried blues background that come across much like the bands Blues Project, Love and Spirit.

NGC-4594 attempted to lay down a foundation of harmonies, yet it’s when they stop singing that they shine, where their guitar meanderings blossom very much in and of the times. As with many of the bands of the day, the vocals, essentially the lyrics, were very important, a hangover from what was demanded from AM radio, yet these vocals ground the music, refusing to let it soar, which is the direction [in my opinion] that they should have headed, as they were on the cusp of a musical sea-change, yet they didn’t venture into the smoothness that was being demanded by lysergic fueled heads. That being said, the band was genre-ly all over the map, infusing bits and pieces of jazz, swing, rock, folk, but not together as a whole, with nearly each number existing within its own space, and with its own soul, meaning the band never managed to forge a path that listeners were able to follow and connect with.

I would not be at all out of line by saying that the band sounds kind of sloppy, sort of an east coast jazzier version of The Doors [in fact, NGC-4594 did open for The Doors], laced with Timothy Leary-esque acid visions of ego, clear light, inner flight, inner connections, and “The Tibetan Book Of The Dead,” a haunting sort of mystic obliteration of the self, with Dave Bliss saying that, “We were singing almost exclusively about drug experiences” in the liner notes. Though like so many other groups of these hazy times, their star burned out long ago, yet the light from that star continues to travel across the cosmos.

If it’s any consolation, it took me three attempts to get through the album, where on the third attempt, I managed to make it uncomfortably all the way through. This is not a record most people will enjoy, it’s not comfortable, certainly you will not be delightfully couch-bound while listening, and for all intent and purposes, should be seen as a musical link in a timeline of the forgotten.

*** The Fun Facts: With band members admitting that the band’s name was “eminently forgettable,” it came into fruition in true hippie fashion, NGC-4594 was picked while flipping through an astronomy book. NGC-4594, regarded as one of the most majestic of all of the galaxies in the Universe, also known as the Sombrero, about 28 million light years away in the constellation of Virgo. This spiral galaxy has several notable features, it consists of a thick torus-like disc with a dark duty rim and the intense bulbous white glow that emanates from its core, along with a colourful dust lane / ring that crosses in front of the galaxy. The galaxy was discovered in 1781 by Pierre Mechain.

Several members of the band where essential in forming The Tribe, a commune on Coventry Lake.

Steve Strager went back to school though did form another band called Sunshine in the early 70’s that sounded much like Earth Wind & Fire, and managed to open for Steely Dan when they played in Waterbury.