Tuesday 14 January 2014

Steve Austin – " Music From The Withered Orange Tree " (Bite Back BB013) 1985

Noooooo, not that Steve Austin!!!!…this one. Definitely not a million dollars of anything involved here, except a couple of grand’s worth of descent synthesizers,
Looking at his Picture on the insert above, this Steve Austin looks like one of those chaps who worked in the keyboard and technology department of your local music emporium. You know the ones too old to be in a gigging rock band, so had to make do with selling keyboards to untalented drongo’s like me and you.
You’d enter the electronic section, and he’d be there tinkling away on the latest clavier,while you stand there waiting for assistance.
“I’ll be with you in a minute mate”, he says without casting a glance in you direction. Then after the end of a note perfect rendition of Rick Wakeman’s ‘Journey to the centre of the Earth’, he receives your request with a sharp intake of breath, as though you don’t know what you’re talking about, and that you’re keeping him away from composing that symphony he’s been writing for the last two years……y’know…..’The Big One’!
That’s what he looks like!
Be that as it is, this Steve Austin can be rightly proud of himself, as he has cobbled together a superbly melancholic electronic concept album, that the Wakeman himself would be proud of, but stripped of all the crap. In places it reminds me of some of the more touching pieces by Phillip Glass, a tubular bells for the bedroom brigade. Plenty of wistful melodies that kind of remind one of a lost childhood……..does this Withered Orange Tree represent the ageing process by any chance?
Love it!

Track Listing:

Music From The Withered Orange Tree Parts 1 – 13

DOWNLOAD some withered oranges HERE!

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