LANDSCAPE occupy a small, but still significant berth in the Electronic music rocket ship that blasted off in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The second - and best known - of their three albums, "From The Tea Rooms Of Mars…" housed their calling card smash hit single, the supernaturally catchy "Einstein A Go-Go" (UK#5) - a song that drives would-be samplers and advertisers into raptures to this day - plus its' equally successful (and utterly deranged) follow up "Norman Bates". The title of this latter probably clues you in to the plot even if you've never come across it before.
LANDSCAPE themselves had built up a reputation as an accomplished jazz-fusion act during the 1970s and their re-invention as (slightly cartoon-y) futuristic space age electro pioneers probably pissed off the faithful at the time. To wide-eyed adolescents like your reviewer, though, they represented something strange, alien and highly accessible rolled into one and "From The Tea Rooms Of Mars…" gave me considerable pleasure during the period 1981-82.
Now buffed up for CD, it still does a reasonably good job in the mustard-cutting stakes. Although drummer/ vocalist RICHARD BURGESS' then futuristic early Simmons kit sounds are actually fairly appalling now and the band's usage of strange new instruments like the lyricon now seem hideously quaint, LANDSCAPE'S knack for humour, quiet subversion and unerring melody remains largely intact.
OK, some of this hasn't aged too gracefully. "New Religion" now just sounds inconsequential; "Doll's House" overwrought and the three-movement title-track (you can take the man out of Prog…) always intensely irritated me and I refuse to offer any mercy at this late stage.
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However, there are still goodly proportions of this that can talk down the scrutiny police. Both "Einstein A Go-Go" and "Norman Bates" have come through with their kook factors intact, and the earlier single that didn't bother the charts, "European Man" has retained a certain danceably dramatic charm. Meanwhile, "Shake The West Awake" makes like a blueprint for the kind of thing Mick Jones' BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE would attempt with things like "Sony" and "Computer Person" is a decent stab at the electro-parp KRAFTWERK were dealing out by the early 1980s.
LANDSCAPE continued on to make a further RCA album in 1982's "Manhattan Boogie", but judging by most of the singles included here, were probably right to knock it on the head by 1984, with BURGESS going on to produce SPANDAU BALLET and bassist ANDY PASK striking a lucrative blow by co-writing the theme tune for the TV show "The Bill."
All flaws aside, though, a retrospective afternoon sampling goodies "From The Tea Rooms Of Mars" can be recommended for at least a half dozen interplanetary delights. Besides, considering their ability with vocoders, perhaps NEIL YOUNG should have considered a collaboration with LANDSCAPE when making the much-maligned "Trans" LP. That really would have been something.
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