One Way Glass: Dancefloor Prog, Brit Jazz & Funky Folk 1968-1975

Liner Note Author: John Reed .
The subtitle of the 2017 collection One Way Glass attempts to hip listeners to what they will find on the three discs within. It reads Dancefloor Prog, Brit Jazz & Funky Folk 1968-1975, and if you think some of those styles and descriptors don't quite make sense on first scan, you may not be alone. It may not be immediately clear how songs by Pentangle, Blue Mink, Soft Machine, Bridget St. John, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Atomic Rooster, Fat Mattress, and the John Schroeder Orchestra all fit together; after a few spins it still might not make sense, but it does sound good. What the compilers of the set are trying to do is rescue some worthwhile, mostly lost, tracks, then recontextualize them in a new way. Bands during that era, even the more serious ones, often had a stray album track or B-side that had a little strut in the beat, a little funk in the horns, or some sultry groove hidden within the jams and progressive meanderings. Something just different enough from what they usually do to perk up the ears of record collectors and DJs looking for something weird. The guys behind One Way Glass do a fine job of cherry-picking songs from a wide variety of bands, both known and totally obscure, that fit the bill. There are folk songs with a little bounce, full-on funk-rock blowouts, soul-jazz workouts, and groovy tunes that aren't really made for dancing, but are easy to nod along to happily. The songs don't necessarily flow perfectly from one to the next and the set doesn't function like a DJ mix, but DJs worth their salt could find at least a handful of songs here that would keep a more adventurous dancefloor interested. It's certainly enough to keep prog, jazz, and folk fans who are looking to expand their horizons locked in and probably scrambling to find more records by some of the bands involved, though they may find that the best tracks have already been scraped together and collected here. The mad scientists who concocted One Way Glass went deep to find gems, mixed them up in new and interesting ways, and came up with a collection that's continually surprising, oddly danceable, and full of tracks that deserved to have the light shone upon them at last. ~ Tim Sendra