Room
Pre-Flight

Today is no longer like it once was. What a cliché... Yet how can you deny it? Let's examine music and start from what we all know: record companies for quite a few years now have done nothing but offer us the same old soup, merely reheating it each time with some new and utterly useless recruit, as if this could change the substance of the now intolerable dish. I am too young to say this, but I'll take poetic license and say it anyway: In my day, it was different. Bands would zoom down uncharted paths and patiently map out the fundamental routes, studying, experimenting, and engraving their discoveries onto vinyls meant to become immortal logbooks of fantastic journeys, unimaginable in this mostly empty and superficial era.

Now let's talk about something less obvious, namely how back then every now and then groups of young unknowns would appear, who with a single release would project themselves so far beyond the boundaries known up to that point, that they managed to take even the most skilled and avant-garde listeners by surprise. But beware: we are not talking about unlistenable dissonances or suites so long and psychedelic they fry most of the average human's neurons, but of extremely complex and somewhat pretentious mixtures, encompassing a large number of genres, courageously amalgamated and performed in such a way as to create a bizarre harmony and a vastness of sound, to say the least, singular.

The Room, needless to say, are one of these pioneering formations that, armed with a diver's suit, plunged into the deepest and most unknown depths of prog, where currents intertwine rock, blues, psych, folk, and classical, resurfacing after careful exploration with Pre-Flight, an album dated 1970, in which the Dorset quintet's crazy musical research is documented. It was indeed in this English county that our heroes were used to performing, at least until, in '69, a second place in a Melody Maker contest for new talents guaranteed guitarists Steve Edge and Chris Williams, singer Jane Kevern, bassist Roy Putt, and drummer Bob Jenkins a contract for recording an LP with Deram.

The opening and closing of the work are entrusted to two suites, respectively "Pre-Flight Part I & II", in which the dense array of guests who will carve out the sound produced by the group thanks to four violins, two violas, two cellos, a second bass, three trumpets, a horn, and a trombone, is immediately noticeable, and "Cemetery Junction Part I & II", where the aforementioned strings and winds, in an irresistible crescendo, endeavor to create an instrumental jewel with austere and majestic tones, made possible also and especially thanks to Bob and his drumming flair.

The blues soul of the band, as well as with the short and lively "Big John Blues", materializes in the characteristic style of the guitars and the deep, plaintive voice of "Where Did I Go Wrong", contrasted with the subsequent and significantly more incisive "No Warmth In My Life", in which jazz hints produced by the trumpets embroider evocative atmospheres around the instruments, this time decidedly unpredictable, of Steve and Chris and Jane's increasingly expressive voice. The sharp and deep sound of Roy's bass, surrounded by guitars and violins, traces the impetuous currents of "Andromeda", while "War" unfolds through fleeting general bursts and sudden tempo changes, alternating delicate and ethereal airs with others that are threatening and aggressive.

Perhaps we are not talking about a milestone or an unachievable masterpiece, but what is certain is that we are faced with an album of undeniable originality that, like the picturesque airplane depicted on the cover, deserves to fly again, if not soaring through the blue sky, at least through the eardrums of some new and motivated listener.