The Comedy of Errors: Ultramarine- Honey/Pansy [Peel Session] (22 May 1992)

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And now after the violence, perfect music for a funeral requiem.

I’m currently taking part in the Twitter challenge #30Days1Album3Songs - my handle is @greasepaintpeel if you want to see my first 20 days’ worth of selections.  I really need to get my arse in gear though and try and listen to Ultramarine’s 1991 album, Every Man and Woman is a Star because on the evidence of the tracks I heard from this Peel session, it should be celebrated as widely as possible.  The album earned rave reviews at the time, but unfortunately for Ultramarine, the charts only seemed to have room for the mellowness of The Orb, who got an honorary exemption from the glut of hi-energy dance music that was continuing to take its cue from the start and middle of raves rather than the end.  Examples that have popped up on this blog include Altern-8 and Utah Saints.  Ultramarine did try and crash the charts with the other two tracks that featured in this session but not on the file I heard, hence why I’m only hyperlinking them, the wonderful Fender Rhodes disco tinged Saratoga and the blusier Nova Scotia which I regard as the weakest track of the session.

Ultramarine certainly seemed to be operating on an alternation between pastoral, mellow, chilled out cuts like Honey on one hand with its restful flute call and those intoxicating Fender Rhodes keyboard foundations topped off with luscious slide guitar and then pairing these up with grittier, harmonica-blasting country blues cuts such as the incongruously titled, Pansy.  Almost as though one track would invite the listener to lie down in the wooded glade only for the cows from the next field to come crashing through to join you.

Videos courtesy of Ultramarine - Topic