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Thursday, March 3, 2011

The Oroonies, England








The Oroonies - The Woods Are Alive with the Smell of His Coming. 1985 Better Days. cassette
The Oroonies - Exalt the Horn. 1986 Better Days. cassette
The Oroonies - Like Yeast We Rise. 1986 Better Days. cassette.
The Oroonies - Ee I Ee I O. 1987 cassette.
The Oroonies - The Whale and the Wind. 1988 Better Days. cassette.
The Oroonies - Of Hoof and Horn. 1991 Demi Monde.
* Cheapsuit Oroonies - Eat, Drink and Be Merry. 1992 cassette.
* Cheapsuit Oroonies - Party On Frapsos. 1994 cassette.
* Cheapsuit Oroonies - Feelin Rooti. 1995 cassette.

* - haven't heard and do not own.

We still have a long way to go on the UK Festival and space rock scene of the 1980s and 90s. And I plan on more updates as they come in. The Alaskan Connection has provided me with many burns from rare cassettes and LPs by Rancid Poultry, AMA, Crow, Omnia Opera and possibly many more. I'm looking towards the summer (possibly late spring) to tackle those.

I'm going to jump ahead a bit here with one of the many Ozric Tentacles offshoot groups: The Oroonies. I've owned the LP of "Of Hoof and Horn" almost since it was released, and within the last month picked up the original cassette of "The Woods are Alive..." from one of my Gnosis buddies. The others on the list I haven't heard yet. Information, as is usual with this particular scene, is scarce and hard to come by. So hopefully this will be a post we continue to update.

The difference between the debut cassette of The Woods and the Demi-Monde LP is striking. "The Woods Are Alive with the Smell of His Coming" is a very crude beginning for the band - a mix of heavy space rock, folk, neo-psych, hard rock, industrial and punk. The band seems to have no direction whatsoever, and the album is quite raw sounding. Still, it's not without its merits - including some pretty inspired space rock jams.

"Of Hoof and Horn" is a wonderful album, and shows that The Oroonies chose to take the path of mystical Central and Eastern European folk mixed in with Ozric Tentacles like space jams. A sound that would still be fresh today, and something the Ozrics themselves could use to balance their all too predictable formula. A super album really.

So I'm very interested in hearing the progression from the beginning to the end. I suspect some of those cassettes could be wonderful - or equally as crude. I have no idea and anxiously await any further data. My understanding is that The Cheapsuit Oroonies, which are all the albums after "Of Hoof and Horn" were more acoustic and folk oriented. (2014 update: I have now heard all of The Oroonies cassettes, and will eventually update this post)

Priority: 2 (for Of Hoof and Horn)

2 comments:

Gobbledygook said...

If you're after the early Oroonies tapes, I'm periodically uploading digital rips of them and other stuff you might be interested in at my blog -

http://headduster.blogspot.com/

Purple Peak Records said...

Nice website Gobbledygook. Looks like you have a lot of interesting, and impossible to find titles. Good stuff.