We're all big fans of XTC around here, so when one of your favorite bands does an side project just for nothing but fun, well then, that's something worth talking about.
The cool thing is that these guys were big fans of vintage 1967 psychedelic music, so they decided to make a legitimate record that was true to it's source, and they are good enough to be able to pull it off.
This record sounds like it was actually recorded 18 years earlier.
They played it all the way even coming up with new personas, so you have Andy Partridge as Sir John Johns, Colin Moulding as The Red Curtain, Dave Gregory as Lord Cornelius Plum, and Ian Gregory as E.I.E.I. Owen.
XTC has long been one of my fave bands, but when I saw the "Dukes of Stratosphear" LP at my brother's house way back in '84 and flipped it on the turntable, I thought it was one of the New Paisley bands. It was such an awesome psychedelic ride. But the voices sounded familiar. Hmmm. XTC in disguise. And damn if Andrew Gold didn't do the same thing in the '90s under the disguise of The Fraternal Order of All, which was a psychedelic masterpiece, too, and could have been Andrew pretending to be XTC pretending to be Dukes of Stratosphear pretending to be The Beatles pretending to be Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band!
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