Current Listening: Henry Fool - Men Singing

I was glad to see Tim Bowness and co resurrect the Henry Fool project. Their last and first album was way back in October 2001 on Malcolm Parkers excellent Cyclops label. This new album is a completely different kettle of fish. Completely instrumental and made up of only four tracks, "Men Singing" is a different band all together. This is jazzy, spacey, meandering and quite wonderful. With no singing, Bowness provides guitar embellishments as the main sonic sounds are provided mainly by guitarist Michael Bearpark and keyboardist Stephen Bennett, though you can tell Bowness has a major hand in directing proceedings.

When snooker guru and all round Magma maniac Steve Davis heard the demos of the album he told Bowness that it reminded him of Quiet Sun's "Mainstream" album. Say no more and Phil Manzanera comes on board to embellish a couple of tracks with his amazing playing. Talking of which I always preferred Manzanera's albums with 801 and Quiet Sun than Roxy Music. Muchmore interesting! I wish Manzanera would reissue his "Listen Now" and "K-Scope" albums as deluxe collectors editions as he did with "801 Live" and "Mainstream".

Is it a coincidence that the Henry Fool album is on the Kscope label?

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