Cream Juice ~ Self Titled Cassette

If, in some alternate reality, synths and home recording equipment were as accessible to mid-70s punks as they are today, it’s a safe-ish bet to imagine some kids leaving the guitars with the noisy boys at the local hall and having a go at emulating Tangerine Dream in the privacy of their bedrooms. It’s an equally safe-ish bet that the results would have sounded like the debut work of Cream Juice (not a name I’d suggest you Google at work!).

This pragmatically-titled cassette is where punk meets prog synths. At certain moments it is clearly channelling its krautrock antecedents but is at times sloppy and loose in the way the Germans would never have tolerated. This is, on the whole, a good thing – there’s a pleasing lack of self-editing and there seems little attempt to impose any rules and regulations. They honour their errors as hidden intentions, to borrow a phrase from Eno. Occasionally it blends beautifully (Tracks 7 and 13 are the most successful here), but even when it doesn’t there is plenty going on to hold the interest.

The duo of Keith Rankin (Giant Claw) and Seth Graham (aka Henry Dawson) clearly don’t match some of their peers (such as Jonas Reinhardt) for the purity of their take on synth-based krautrock, and their full immersion in the genre. But this means that their work is fresher and more exciting – and certainly wittier – than their contemporaries.   Perhaps, even more importantly, Cream Juice carries with it a sense of fun.  Remember that?  (Jeremy Bye)

Available here