Guys and Dolls: Apogee - Inside Above (23 April 1993)

 

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Inside Above was the first track I heard when I listened to the file for this 23/4/93 Peel Show, but it wasn’t the first record on that night’s programme, and I wish it had been. The file cuts in during the opening seconds of the track and I hope that Peel didn’t announce it before playing it, because the opening 40 seconds are by turns intriguing and bewildering. Just where was this going to go? As it transitions from an early ringtone through what sounds like machinery being cranked into life, it has the feel of some bizarre, unwieldy invention, like a home-made aeroplane, being taken through its start-up procedure. Tonally, it sounds like a close relation to  Cumulus by Pram, but once Dan Curtin, the man behind Apogee, gets his invention up into the air, it soars and swoops into some exciting destinations over its near six minute running time.

Unlike the other tracks on the Tales From the 2nd Moon EP, which I all found to be a bit one-note, Inside Above features plenty of light and shade contrasts throughout. The flight metaphor seems particularly appropriate during the opening 80 seconds as the ticking beats click away alongside synth notes that sound  like the murkiness inside rainclouds.  We’re waiting to get above the cloud-line and into open sky. 

Once we do at around 1:20, it sounds like the equivalent of flight-time rush hour, as the synths get more ominous and the squelches sound like the chatter of a persistent air-traffic controller trying to talk the unexpectedly airborne plane through the jams of the air.

At 2:45, we’re back to the start-up sequence, which suggests that space in the sky has been found, but this temporary respite leads into my favourite part of the track around 3:20, when underpinned by spooky  minimoogs, what sounds like the world’s smallest samba band heralds what sounds like the plane’s moment to show its tricks. The synth brass is cheap and tacky, yes, but the brio with which it comes in appears to soundtrack the plane doing loops and corkscrew twists in the sky. It’s a brief moment of liberation before the ominous sound of flight-time rush hour crashes in again and the plane begins its descent back to ground. Does it make it back safely? The final collection of squelches and sound oscillation is ambiguous, but it was a hell of a flight while it lasted.

Video courtesy of Jazzy Groove Channel.