/mtv/ - Media and Interests

Two of the greatest progressive rock rekkerds ever, released by one group of genius musicians, released within a timeframe of under a year (Unrest late May ‘74, IPOL early May ‘75). The generational run to end the generational run of unmatched musick spearheaded by Canterbury before punk hit the scene and brapped away any sophistication. British musick never again approached the heights Canterbury reached at their apex in the early-mid ‘70s. Setting aside the pointless social criticism from a conservative/libertarian perspective that the American psychedelic/progressive movements championed (revealing their buffoonery) and the vague left-avantgarde of the German front, one too stubborn and the other too confused to make a rational point, the Canterbury school presented a rare flavor where Marxian analysis summons from the perspective of the patrician. Whereas punk would use left-adjacent politics to summon an emotional reaction from the audience, the Canterbury disciples settle aside the moralizing for a rational breakdown. Where emotion arises comes from the excess of the braininess, the rationality buzzing away the self, allowing emotion to flow from the soul. The curiosity about the perception of reality manifests as playful Dada, the melancholy of the current state of things doubles as deep introspection, and the endless chugging forward of the material world, above all else, imbues a deep personal relation to the future. That is Canterbury’s; Wyatt’s, Ayers’, Oldfield’s, Allen’s, and of course Frith’s and Hodgkinson’s great discovery; by relating the forward marching of time with the abstract, material, and personal, these great musicians found a style of musical progress which casts aside the cliches and formalisms of the past. Henry Cow, the great disciple of Soft Machine, and their contemporaries have carved a branch on the tree of musick which sprouts to the sky, solitary, but aware.