Kaleidoscope (UK) Fairfield

More by accident than design, Kaleidoscope have long been regarded as prime exponents of psychedelia, UK-style. Their two late '60s albums for the Fontana label, "Tangerine Dream" and "Faintly Blowing", remain eminently collectable examples of the era, as much for their musical excellence as the scarcity of original pressings ("Dive Into Yesterday", a collection featuring the band's best work, was issued by Fontana in 1997).



After five singles and two albums, all critically applauded but commercially unsuccessful, Kaleidoscope changed their name to Fairfield Parlour and switched to the progressive Vertigo label. A further slew of releases (including the classic "Bordeaux Rose" single) saw no appreciable change in the band's fortunes, and they split in the summer of 1971 following a lack of record company interest in the group's "White Faced Lady" project ("Lady finally saw the light of day in January 1991, to the usual glut of excellent reviews).



In 1987, long-awaited, limited, vinyl reissues of "Tangerine Dream" and "Faintly Blowing" on the Five Hours Back label were snapped up by eager devotees; and recent years have seen the band's entire recorded output made available once more.



Besides the aforementioned "Dive Into Yesterday" compilation, CDs of those first two albums (including bonus single-only cuts) are readily available on Repertoire, while their post-Kaleidoscope work has been mopped up by "The Fairfield Parlour Years" on Burning Airlines. Besides featuring the "From Home To Home" and "White Faced Lady" albums and all attendant singles, this double CD set also includes "Let The World Wash In": a 45 recorded under the name I Luv Wight as the official theme to the 1970 Isle of Wight festival. The collection also features the song "Eyewitness" (recorded as the theme to the 1970 movie of the same name, but never officially released in its own right), plus a 1991 re-recording of "Bordeaux Rose".



There are a further couple of sets also worthy of investigation: "Please Listen To The Pictures" (Circle) gathers together 22 of the many tracks recorded for BBC radio between 1967 and 1971; while "The Sidekicks Sessions 1964-1967" (Burning Airlines) looks at the group's pre-Kaleidoscope days as The Sidekicks and The Key. Its 21 songs are drawn from the band's own archive of dusty tapes and crumbling acetates and, as such, the sound quality at times leaves something to be desired, but no matter. From the standard beat group fare of R&B covers, via the naive charm of early Daltrey/Pumer originals and through to the more recognisable sound of Kaleidoscope in embryo with "Holidaymaker" and "You're Not Mine", it's a fascinating document of one of the UK's most important, yet criminally neglected groups.