Quiet Sun

I've recently come across some music that I had never heard of before. As I'm a die hard Pink Floyd fan, I'm always on the lookout for similar sounds: experimental, psychedelic, avant-garde rock music. All of this and more is found in the band Quiet Sun and their only album Mainstream. I found Quiet Sun in a sort of roundabout manner. I'm a bassoonist, and as such, I was one day looking around on the web for new and interesting information regarding the bassoon and bassoonists, and ran across the name Lindsay Cooper. I found that she played bassoon and other reeds for the British psychedelic rock band Henry Cow. Further delving brought me to a list of several of Henry Cow's fellow bands from the "Canterbury Scene", one of which was Quiet Sun. Since I thoroughly enjoyed the snippets of their music and the reviews and descriptions of their sound, I decided to order Mainstream a few weeks ago. I just now got the chance to listen to it in depth, and found that it completely lives up to my expectations. It is a wonderful mix of jazz, psychedelic, art rock, ambient, minimalism, and experimental music. This is my first delve into Canterbury Scene music, so I don't really have anything to compare it to. It certainly is a good find for Floyd lovers such as myself, and is also reminiscent of King Crimson and The Nice. Quiet Sun consists of Charles Hayward, Dave Jarrett, Phil Manzanera, and Bill MacCormick. Also participating on Mainstream are Ian MacCormick and Brian Eno, whose style is clearly heard. To sum up, I very much enjoyed Mainstream for its simply beautiful, if sometimes rather strange-sounding, music, and it will stand many, many more listenings.

-Eric