The Home Service
The Mysteries

Just like the classic progressive rock of the '70s, where obscure yet highly talented musical formations await rediscovery, the neo-prog of the '80s also reveals small gems with the faintest glow, offering the primary pleasure of surprise rather than the exaltation of success, proving that an underground movement persisted even during the commercial era of disco music, punk, and new wave. The Home Service were an ephemeral formation, a meteor, with no more than three projects (including albums and EPs) all released around 1984 when English folk musician John Tams opened a brief professional chapter geared towards symphonic rock, only to return, battered by critical and commercial failure, to popular music. This band was a studio project supported financially by saxophonist David Roach, a soloist from the English modernist jazz scene and a valuable tenor for the English National Orchestra and Michael Nyman's ensemble.

The story of this album is interesting and worth telling; it all started from the need to score the theatrical play "The Mysteries" of the National Theatre, a three-act production for public performance and subsequent television broadcast. Biblical events were freely intermixed with what historically pertains to the main human events of Jesus: birth, passion, and crucifixion; however, the project was not religious (by admission of the artistic director Bill Bryden) but highlighted certain medieval writings about a man who really lived and who was baptized in the Gospels as the Christ. The focal point of the play was based on a masterful interpolation of dances, violent yet compassionate choreography, strictly sung texts, light games, and music, all enriched by the location, a splendid Gothic cathedral rather than a classic theater. The musical direction was entrusted to John Tams, who enlisted an entire rock orchestra of twelve members (including strings and winds); the original score was recorded in the studio in November 1984 for the release of the self-titled album and a single "The Mysteries EP". As in the best "progressive tradition," the album is divided into three highly varied suites: "The Nativity", "The Passion" and "Doomsday". No particular virtuosity in execution exists, but compositionally the album fully belongs to symphonic post-rock due to the incredible variety of styles and sounds used; ethereal moments played on electronic keyboards (Coronation of the Virgin, God) alternate with traditional Irish pieces or specially rearranged medieval "istampitte" (Shepherds Arise, Creation, Entry to Jerusalem, The Arrest) and instrumental compositions for electric guitar by John Tams or keyboards by composer Peter Bullock. The songs range from the lighter moments of We Sing Allelujah, Lewk Up Lewk Up, Don't Be An Outlaw, Lay Me Low, to traditional chorals for solo voice such as Wonderous Love, All in the Morning, The Moon Shines Bright, with more than a few nods to Rick Wakeman of "King Arthur" in the pompous The Kings, Like Wake Dirge, and Herod.

Recommended for those who years earlier appreciated the pseudo-religious turn of Eela Craig (Missa Universale) and curious also for the fact that it was released by a label decidedly uninterested in art rock, the English Coda Records, a fusion-jazz branch of the much more important and well-known Beggars Banquet.