11/11/2018: From the Vaults - Flightless

Welcome back to From the Vaults, the semi-regular feature where we dive back into the BEM archives to revisit some of our oulder releases. This week, we're going back the furthest we've ever gone, because today's featured album, while technically released in 2017, is a reissue - not merely a reissue, but one from 1989, before some of this article's readers (and indeed its writer) were even born. So gate your snares, dust off your neon pink knee socks, and then put them away again because this is definitely not that sort of album. This is Flightless.

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I'll have to eschew my usual rundown of the band, because this is a one-man show: Rog Patterson contributes "guitars, basses, vocals, and lunch". Patterson was a veteran of the so-called "heavy wood" scene, appearing as one half of Twice Bitten (whose album Late Cut was also reissued by BEM a couple of years earlier) throughout the 80s. Originally engineered by Dave Hadley and mixed by Chris Walker and Dave Chang, the 2017 release of Flightless is a remaster, guided by the able hand of Daniel Bowles of Seren Sounds.

So what exactly is a Flightless? What, for that matter, is "heavy wood"? Have a listen and find out. (This track wasn't actually on the original release - the remaster includes some demos



So we have our key elements: sharp, focused guitar work with bass backing, and thoughtful, often bitter lyrics. It's no coincidence that we chose to rerelease this album at the time we did: it may be nearly three decades old, but Rog's "characteristic bleating on the subject of human stupidity" feels almost painfully timely. I chose this track for a reason. "It Can't Happen Here" is also the name of a satirical novel from the 30s which sees America brought under the yoke of a totalitarian demagogue. At the time it was a response to those Americans who dismissed fascism as a uniquely European phenomenon, but how many times did we hear variations on this theme repeated after November 2016? Is the shoe perhaps on the other foot now?

Saying that a piece of music "makes you think" is perhaps most common nowadays as a sarcastic jab at those who fancy themselves visionaries, but Flightless does, in fact, make you think. Stylistically, it's the perfect fit, heavy enough to carry weight but spare and restrained enough to give you space to reflect. Patterson wrote in 2017 that "I suspect that the worst is yet to come", and the sense of foreboding still burns strong as the last notes of the album fade. This is quite an intense album, and I don't listen to it very often - it demands time, space, and above all thought, and all three of those are becoming harder to come by. But isn't that, in a way, the point?

Flightless is available now from the BEM webstore.

Status Update

On this, the centennial of the armistice that ended the First World War, it's only fitting that we release The Great War - available now on CD and download. Pick up a copy if you can, and have a read of my writeup from last month if you'd like a slightly closer look.

Review Roundup

Two for The Great War this week: a 9/10 from The Prog Mind, awarded for "all the edge and grittiness that is needed for this subject matter", and another strong writeup from Phil Lively of The Progressive Aspect.