MOORE, ANTHONY - Flying Doesn't Help

""40-plus years since its original release, the pop-punk-new wave inventions of Anthony Moore's Flying Doesn't Help are freshly remastered, blasting the sparkling, angular sounds into today with perfect vitality. After spending the early years of the '70s making experimental music first as a solo artist, then with Slapp Happy and Henry Cow, 1976's OUT sessions had reinvigorated Anthony's youthful love of the naive pop melodies of pop radio, the undeniable excitement of songs. While OUT ultimately went unreleased at the time, the iconoclasm clouding the late '70s air was addictive and transformative for Anthony. England seemed to be roiled as violently as it had been in counter-cultural days a decade earlier; the UK pop charts breathlessly reflected the changing spectrum with equal parts aging hippie and prog delicacies alongside new ascendant sounds: rough-hewn pub and punk rock, plus dub reggae and disco and ska and stiff and krautrock . . . This proved to be an ideal environment for Anthony to make records by exploring, as he puts it, the 'deep connection between minimalism, repetition, working with tape and celluloid and forming the modules of a three minute pop song.' Caught up in a no-holds-barred era, Anthony was more than happy to play the out-of-his-head madman, raving through outrageous exchanges with the press, while 'Judy Get Down' received Single of the Week honors from the NME (with review penned by Brian Eno). Represented by Blackhill Enterprises, Anthony did production work throughout 78-79, on Kevin Ayers' Rainbow Takeaway, Manfred Mann's Earth Band's Angel Station and the first This Heat album, meanwhile cutting his own songs on a dead time deal at Workhouse Studio with engineer/producer Laurie Latham. Through the wee hours of countless nights, the two pieced together Flying Doesn't Help, with a little help from friends (an inspired bunch, including Bob Shilling, Charles Hayward, Chris Slade, Robert Vogel, Festus, Matt Irving, Sam Harley, Bernie Clark, Edwin Cross and Martine Moore on the telephone!) Building upon the axis of pop and experimental impulses that distinguished OUT, and informed further by the raw sensibilities exploding everywhere, Flying Doesn't Help blasts out of the speakers with its own unique blend of sophistication and aggression, Anthony's keyboard flashes between arpeggiations and outright stabs among the noise of slicing guitars, funk basslines and the reverbed blare of the drumkit..."" - Drag City.