Short Reviews [Hydrogen Band - 2024 - "H2 Two"]

Following on from ‘H2 One’ we have ‘H2 Two’, which will soon be followed by ‘H2 Three’. Yet again what we have here are two lengthy tracks recorded live and without overdubs by Dave Newhouse (keyboards, flute), Barney Jones (guitar, metal clarinet), and Bev Stephenson (synth, bell tree). Recorded in 1980 the recordings have been de-mixed and remastered by Ian Beabout and are now being made available for our listening pleasure. Dave does make a confession that there are two one-minute sections on “The House on the Hill” where he accidentally combined two different sessions – he was going to delete them but when he listened to what he had created he felt this was a happy accident and perfectly fitted with the ethos of the band. I generally think of Dave as being primarily a woodwind player, but of course he did also play keyboards in The Muffins, and here he is combining with Bev to create layers and ideas while Barney can often be found moving in a quite different direction, yet somehow, they all combine together to make musical sense of what is taking place. In many ways this is a logical progression from what Dave had already been doing with The Muffins, while Barney was heavily into experimentation with Mars Everywhere (they released ‘Industrial Sabotage’ the same year this was recorded). Together the trio created music which is still exciting and taking us in new directions in 2024, some 44 years after they created it out of the thin air.