NOT before time. A physical copy of the debut album by London adventurers in sound Bark Psychosis has been the proverbial needle in a haystack since the record’s release in 1994. Now, almost a quarter of a century on, Hex has been granted a fine remaster and re-release, including a two-disc vinyl edition.
Perhaps best known as the album that inadvertently begat the term “post-rock”, Hex’s musicality and imagination merit a shift in perception. Fusing elements of dub, free jazz, orchestral music, ambient and rock, the seven songs crept half-asleep into virgin territory, the results filtered through Graham Sutton’s nuanced grasp of the sonic picture. Nocturnes such as The Loom, A Street Scene and the unsurpassable twilight soundtrack Pendulum Man are painted with brush strokes so deft as to beggar belief. Space, reverb, widescreen tonality, pitch – all are deployed to maximum effect.
A peer of the outstanding Laughing Stock by Talk Talk and spiritual parent of the more recent high-water mark Field of Reeds by These New Puritans, which Sutton co-produced, Hex is incontrovertibly not only one of the finest albums of its era, but also of the contemporary music canon.
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