Gryphon’s ReInvention Reviewed
Gryphon — ReInvention
Reviewed by Richard Elen
The story of the band Gryphon goes back to the beginnings of the 1970s and the London College of Music, when multi-instrumentalists Richard Harvey and Brian Gulland — who were playing Renaissance woodwinds in Early Music band Musica Reservata — got a small group together under the name Spelthorne. Soon the original lutenist left, and Graeme Taylor (guitars and vocals), who had been at school with Harvey, joined the group, swiftly followed by David Oberlé on drums, percussion and vocals. Almost at once the band changed their name to Gryphon after the beast in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. The band started by playing authentic mediaeval and Renaissance music but soon branched out and started writing their own material. Lawrence Aston, A&R at noted folk label Transatlantic Records, heard the band and signed them. Their first, eponymous album was released in 1973.
The band went on to make three more albums for Transatlantic: Midnight Mushrumps, based around their music for Peter Hall’s National Theatre production of The Tempest; Red Queen to Gryphon Three, and Raindance, the latter which I had the pleasure to record and co-produce in the midsummer of 1975. Various disagreements between the band and the record company resulted in Gryphon moving to EMI’s Harvest label, where they released one album, Treason, in 1977. By this time the band was, as were many high-quality acts of the time, being eclipsed by punk artists who could go out and gig for far less money per night than a complex outfit like Gryphon.
Thus the band became dormant, and so it remained until 2009 when they got together for a reunion concert. By then there had been rumours of a new album in the works, but nothing emerged. Richard Harvey left the band in 2016 to pursue his extensive solo interests, and well-known music library composer and multi-instrumentalist Graham Preskett joined. After a series of concerts a new album, the first for 41 years, was announced: ReInvention, released in September 2018.
The lineup on the album includes original members Gulland, Oberlé and Taylor, with the addition of the aforementioned Preskett, Rory McFarlane on bass and Andy Findon on a range of woodwinds. All the pieces on the album were written by band members: there are no arrangements of traditional pieces here as characterised the first two albums.
ReInvention kicks off with Pipeup Downsland DerryDellDanko — a Gulland title if I ever heard one, which features interweaving recorders with staccato guitar phrases and chords, ultimately joined by pipe organ and saxophone. The piece wanders about lyrically and extremely pleasantly, and you never quite know where it’s going to go next. Out of this North Kent childhood idyll (for such it is), emerge Brian’s slightly avant-garde lyrics. “Stranger things than this have we passed / On our way to you today.” Indeed.
Next up is a piece from Preskett entitled Rhubarb Crumhorn. Yes, all the titles are fairly esoteric, but this piece itself is less so: it’s a very accessible number that builds gently from flute and organ to bassoon and into a fairly stately full band arrangement punctuated by warm Renaissance-sounding chords, and even a little theme reminiscent of something that Richard Harvey might have written. Then it’s off into a brisk gallop through a natty chord progression. Despite being written by relative “new boy” Preskett, this is a classic self-penned (as opposed to trad) Gryphon piece: had it been me sequencing this album, I would have opened the disc with it. There are, however, no crumhorns in this piece.
With A Futuristic Auntyquarian we are back in Brian Gulland territory, with an angular harpsichord-like opening — but only for a moment, as a nicely extended mock-Renaissance woodwind tune takes over, prancing lyrically over the underlying keyboards, to be joined by violin before the track goes off on a pleasant Gullandesque abstract wander with gentle exchanges between the instruments, ultimately joined by drums before going somewhat up-tempo and finally returning to a more robust take on the opening. Nice.
Recall that the band is named Gryphon after the character in Carroll’s Alice, and Graeme Taylor’s ten-minute setting of the poem Haddocks’ Eyes from Looking Glass becomes clear. Gently wandering solo bassoon opens, joined by clarinet and violin for a short trio until joined by acoustic guitar which brings structure to the wandering — and a tune, albeit quite an eccentric one. The piece picks up on the entry of Brian’s vocal, playing the part of the White Knight, in a dialogue with the voice of the Aged, Aged Man, played by Dave Oberlé, with a backing that gently rocks along, with occasional inter-verse returns to the lyrical wandering of the opening until we encounter a rougher solo section two-thirds of the way through, featuring wild heavily distorted and harmonised bassoon. The vocal dialogue gently slows to an apparent end — but it’s not an end at all, it’s a little instrumental romp that returns, finally, to the original gentle theme for the closing lines.
Hampton Caught is another Preskett number, with one of several punning titles to boot. He notes, “It starts somewhere near Sherwood Forest, lurches through harpsichord in three four, a slight hint of boogie in three, then a proper bit of electric guitar, before being interrupted unaccountably by a church organ, some strange rhythms and a build up. It culminates in the three four harpsichord section with additional string as it were.” Couldn’t have put it better myself.
Hospitality at A Price… (Dennis) Anyone For? is, of course, another Gulland number. The sleeve notes describe this as a “genial evocation of the 20s”, and it has some of that ultimately, but in fact it sounds rather like another Carroll poem with the exception of a couple of modern references. And suddenly: jazz crumhorns lead us off into a period piece and a very strange ending.
Dumbe Dum Chit (Preskett) takes its strange name from a mnemonic for a drum pattern to resolve this “bouncy bassoon tune in a strange rhythm”. A neat little number that follolops along, with in fact two strange rhythms rather than just the one, featuring not only bassoon but clarinet and guitar too.
Bathsheba is bass-player McFarlane’s sole composition on the album. Gryphon fans will know Taylor’s style and certainly Gulland’s, and Preskett fits beautifully into the Gryphon tradition, but McFarlane’s is a new voice and a very pleasant one at that. We begin with interweaving fractured phrases from bassoon and clarinet, joined by guitar and drums and, finally, a warm bass part that lasts only a few bars each time around before being joined by violin and woodwinds. One is reminded just a little of the North Sea Radio Orchestra or even the Muffin Men. The sleeve notes outline the controversial Biblical tale.
Sailor V, another by Graham Preskett, begins with a respectably nautical feel (you mean it’s not a pun?) featuring pipes and fiddle, joined by bassoon and guitar. It moves gently and lyrically along until gaining a brasher spring in its step, a touch of the Irish and some odd harmonica flourishes, as the piece moves through some lively changes in the course of its eight minutes to climax with an electric guitar section recapitulating the opening theme, doubled by other instruments in a very Gryphon culmination followed by a gentle wind-down. C’est la vie.
I have a particular fondness for Graeme Taylor’s song Ashes. One of my favourite Gryphon tracks, it was originally written for the 1975 Raindance album, which I engineered and co-produced, but was excluded from the release by the record company for some unknown reason. Its curious tale of afternoon cricket, King’s nephews and stallions, gently and lyrically sung by Brian, is a true joy. Summer that year at Sawmills studio near Fowey in Cornwall was hot, and I decided to record Brian’s vocal (twice), in the open, in stereo, with the mics a fair distance away from him so I caught the birds singing in the background. The version on ReInvention doesn’t have that, but Brian’s performance, albeit not double-tracked, is virtually identical to the original, as is much of the arrangement, though the solos are instrumented differently. Of course I prefer my version, but this one is very, very good 🙂 (You can hear the original on the Collection II album if you can find one.)
The album closes with The Euphrates Connection by Gulland, which begins with a low-pitched recorder theme, picked up by guitar and then a curious, short and unexpected vocal, developing into a complex interweaving multi-part instrumental, laced with Brian’s trademark angular and unexpected figures, a delicious rocky interchange between guitar, pipe organ and other instruments leading to a repeating sequence of short pipe organ chords, adorned only by reverb and the occasional sonority, before being joined by solo flute, bass, violin and guitar fragments and fading gradually to an end.
And so ends Gryphon’s first new album for over forty years. It’s beautifully recorded and produced by Graeme Taylor in his “Morden Shoals” studio: the overall sound is excellent and well-captured with a great deal of detail and care. The musicianship is of a uniformly high standard throughout and even the most complex angular and avant-garde passages are confident, sure-footed and executed with aplomb.
There are few artists who could return to the scene after four decades to such acclaim as Gryphon, as if their return has been awaited by us all for the entire time they were away. ReInvention provides exactly what it says, the band reinventing itself with new members and new directions. Unmistakeably Gryphon, it develops musical directions that were hinted at in earlier albums, takes them forward, and delivers an ultimately satisfyingly and eclectic result. One can only hope that it is the first in a series as Gryphon moves forward to new musical heights following its re-formation.
