Journey cover

Journey

Released

In a blindfold test, you would swear that Journey, the third album by Arthur Brown’s Kingdom Come, was a lost early eighties post-punk masterpiece, such is its predictive qualities. It’s not so much the way it engages with technology and electronics in a manner that’s rudimentary but experimental, though it was the first album recorded entirely with a drum machine as the core of the ‘rhythm section’. It’s also there in the way Brown and co. build the arrangements and melodies – they’re not threadbare, but at times they embrace a starchy minimalism that’s curiously appealing (e.g. the opening few minutes of “Time Captives”). But it’s the interplanetary curiosity of the Journey – stretches of bubbling, air-popping synth noise, bossa nova rhythms suspended in empty space, riffs like prog in miniature, Brown’s heroic vocal delivery, guitars that gnash and gnarl in the corners – that makes it both so compelling, and so unexpected. 1973 felt like the future here.

Jon Dale

Recommended by

Suggestions
_snd cover

_snd

Microstoria
The Impossible Humane cover

The Impossible Humane

Mixed Band Philanthropist
Displaced Links cover

Displaced Links

Kendall Turner Overdrive
Transvitaexpress (Racconto Psicofonico Dell'aldilà) cover

Transvitaexpress (Racconto Psicofonico Dell'aldilà)

Marcello Giombini, Vincenzo Barbarino
Gottfried Michael Koenig cover

Gottfried Michael Koenig

Gottfried Michael Koenig
ABC123 cover

ABC123

To Rococo Rot