Matching Mole
Little Red Record

"Little Red Record" is the second and final studio work of Matching Mole, a group founded in 1971 by the illustrious musician and composer Robert Wyatt following his departure from the historic band Soft Machine. Accompanying the king of Canterbury on this new adventure were guitarist Phil Miller (formerly in Delivery and Caravan's "Waterloo Lily"), bassist Bill Mac Cormick (formerly in Quiet Sun), and keyboardists Dave McRae (formerly in Nucleus of "Belladonna") and David Sinclair (formerly in Caravan and on Wyatt's first solo album, "The End of an Ear"); the latter left the four after the first self-titled album to join his cousin Richard's band, Hatfield and the North.

"Little Red Record" also boasts none other than the collaboration of Brian Eno on synthesizers and Robert Fripp on production.

As can be seen from the cover, Wyatt and company's political intentions are not so concealed: the four in belligerent pose with a rifle pointed east, aiming for the liberation of Taiwan in the name of Mao and socialism; in the lyrics, all written by him, Wyatt will have the opportunity to clarify his strong positions on the subject. Curiously, however, he is not the author of any of the compositions on the album, a task mostly assigned to McRae; Wyatt, instead, dedicated himself to a meticulous study on the use of the voice.

Fripp's influence is evident, for better or worse; on the one hand, he opened new horizons for the group towards jazz-electronic contaminations, already experimented in some King Crimson tracks, while on the other hand, his strong, charismatic personality almost intimidated Phil Miller, who saw some of his ideas, already appreciated by the band, excluded by Fripp.

The opening track, "Starting in the Middle of the Day, We Can Drink Our Politics Away", is a short liturgical madrigal of syllables (those of the title) repeated over the same piano texture; the following four tracks together form a real suite: from the 8 dadaist minutes of "Marchides", with a distorted and visionary guitar interlude, where the soft abstract sound typical of Soft Machine prevails, to the powerful drum work in "Nan True's Hole", set between evanescent keyboards, female spoken words, and a soft chorus. "Righteous Rumba" is a short bridge for alternate voices, accompanied by jazz and guitar drones in the finale, and converges into the purest Canterbury sound of organ textures and guitar riffs of "Brandy as in Benj".

"Gloria Gloom", opened and closed by Eno's spatial visions of synthesizers, consists of multiple overlapped conversations on a powerful rhythm section, all dominated by Wyatt's vocal flights, continuing with a less experimental but more engaging vocal work on the subsequent "God Song", a soft ballad for bass and acoustic guitar. With "Flora Fidgit", we get closer to that typical jam sound of Soft Machine, while the concluding "Smoke Signal" is built on a McRae theme, interspersed with Eno's electronic atmospheres before the free finale.

Highly recommended record, and not just for genre enthusiasts, if only for the presence of the triad Fripp, Eno, and Wyatt, the pinnacle of Music.