Another Splash of Colour: New Psychedelia in Britain 1980-1985 [Box Set]

The first two discs develop in a predictable but always rewarding and intelligently curated way.... The rest of the collection, by design or happy accident, chronicles the plummet and crash from visionary transcendence to the kind of dark Romanticism that the Bad Seeds were mining at about the same time in Australia. [No. 131, p.58]

Providing more than the typical tidy overview, a unique pleasure that Another Splash of Colour affords is that it allows one to become something of an instant scholar of a movement that many at this point either haven’t heard of or don’t remember, but should.

Another Splash of Colour is a perfect jumping-off point that covers most of the important players--sadly, no Dukes of Stratosphear tracks were available--and does a great job capturing and defining an almost forgotten scene with the care it deserves.

Not only does the record’s scrappy, lived-in ambiance reflect the DIY necessities of that scene--it creates an intimate, densely packed time-capsule, in which strange aromas have mingled until even the minor curios are a source of wonder.

Some of it’s inescapably retro, such as The Times’ I Helped Patrick McGoohan Escape and Firmanent & The Elements’ The Festival Of Frothy Muggament. However, there are plenty of better-known names, sympaticos such as The Monochrome Set and TV Personalities, as well as an early demo from Doctor And The Medics, Barbara Can’t Dance, whose number one single Spirit In The Sky was the commercial highpoint of this movement.