I've tasted a retro treat, which isn't retro at all, since it's spankin' new. Its content, however, invokes the past, at least to my old ears. It's cool, clever and hip, but even more so, dangerous, tempting and weird.
It's a Bearsuit Records release, created by Bunny and the Invalid Singers, in the form of an album entitled Fear of the Horizon.
Fear's selections are entrancing (with seraphic vocals and meddling moves), striking the most adventurous and forbidden of tuneful tones. I'm talkin' an insinuated, iconic mix of Ron Grainer (the Prisoner/Number 6); Laurie Johnson (Peel and Steed); Hugo Montenegro (Solo and Kuryakin): in other words, televised, reinterpreted Bond for the ardent masses, achin' for some derring-do wonderment, yet oh-so-cautious of what lies beyond Bond.
"Eamon the Destroyer" kicks off the album, and in an audacious nutshell, sets the pace, spreading images of roving, pale balloons on an idyllic island of doom, where an edgy Patrick McGoohan waves and quips, "Be seeing you."
The same sardonic quality springs from this track's exhilarating companions. "Woman with the Plastic Hand" implies super-charged eroticism, compromised by elastic deceit (a svelte android or cyborg sizing one up for defeat). The same sinister sensation seeps from "The Teeth Stay in Leith" and "Vandal Schooling", where even one's focused, suave stance falls victim to steel-probing, cerebral control. Then again, perhaps such is simply a covert consequence of that "Positive Approach of Talkative Ron": one of the catchiest compositions ever to rear its surreptitious head.
The other entries stand as haunting interludes, woven with notes plucked from horror-movie anthologies: splenetic, moral warnings that one should embrace, but no matter how careful one plays it, ample booby traps await.
For example, the prepossessing yet foreboding title track tells us that overconfidence is the overseeing enemy here. Its distinctive stream ultimately grazes (and protrudes far higher) in "Cast Adrift", which becomes a strenuous, false escape. This is matched by the warbled currents of "The Horizon Project" and its tinkling sequel, "There's a Thousand Things", which may attract, but still leave one petrified and enclosed in their wake.
At journey's end, there's only hospitable ambivalence, captured in the rewarding "Invisible and Divided Sea": a nostalgic, thematic carryover for those special enough to be in the know. The entry conveys what's done is done, but hey, my Bondian blokes, you've at least survived to live, die and fear another day.
FYI: Bunny is Edinburgh's dear Dave Hillary, once a member of Idiot Half Brother; Haq; Whizz Kid; and Annie & the Station Orchestra. Bunny unleashed a prior album in '15. In '11, "Fall Apart in My Backyard" came courtesy of what was then known as Bunny and the Electric Horsemen. (Both entries grace the Bearsuit label.)
I highly endorse Fear of the Horizon. It's the perfect, audio pill for the right, dissident disposition. (Fear of the Horizon can be purchased through Amazon; i-Tunes; and Spotify.)
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