{"id":487,"date":"2011-04-08T05:01:17","date_gmt":"2011-04-08T10:01:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=487"},"modified":"2026-02-09T08:20:03","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T13:20:03","slug":"album-review-quiet-sun-mainstream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2011\/04\/08\/album-review-quiet-sun-mainstream\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Quiet Sun – Mainstream"},"content":{"rendered":"

Perversely titled Mainstream<\/em>, the sole release by avant-prog-jazz outfit Quiet Sun<\/strong> is in fact as far from that adjective as can be imagined. Recorded in between sessions for Phil Manzanera<\/strong>\u2019s Diamond Head<\/em> LP<\/a>, Mainstream<\/em> featured that guitarist\u2019s old band, reunited to finally create the album never made during the group\u2019s original existence. Quiet Sun broke up in 1972 when Manzanera headed to Roxy Music<\/strong>, but the sessions for his solo album afforded the surreptitious opportunity to create this delightfully oddball album.<\/p>\n

Bearing sonic similarities to Diamond Head<\/em> — how could it not, using many of the same musicians, engineers and studio \u2013 Mainstream<\/em> is a far more unusual affair. Informed by the progressive jazz predilections of its band members — yet rooted in the distinctive textural playing of Manzanera \u2013 the album sounds like little else of its era. Imagine if Caravan<\/strong> rocked (a lot) harder, and you begin to get a sense of this music.<\/p>\n

Largely dispensing both with vocals and pop song convention, the songs on Mainstream<\/em> aim for the challenging end of the pool, and nearly always hit their mark.\u00a0 At times the songs feel improvised, and while tracks like \u201cSol Caliente\u201d move in multiple directions at once, they\u2019re carefully thought-out pieces. Manzanera\u2019s guitar shrieks and screams while the band engages in some tricky, jazzy playing underneath. Like modern jazz<\/em>, each player\u2019s part is inventive and worth individual attention. Like prog<\/em>, there\u2019s power and fury in much of the playing. Yet like rock<\/em>, it, well, rocks.<\/p>\n

What Quiet Sun lacks — and it lacks it in a good way \u2013 is any sort of pop sensibility. For that, listeners are directed to the excellent Diamond Head<\/em>. But on Mainstream<\/em> we get instead numbers like \u201cTrumpets With Motherhood,\u201d which sounds not unlike some sort of Carl Palmer<\/strong>-meets-Frank Zappa<\/strong> freakout. Then \u201cBargain Classics\u201d gets even weirder, with Manzanera turning in some of his strangest guitar work.<\/p>\n

Quiet Sun takes a more pensive approach on \u201cR.F.D\u201d but even here there\u2019s a pleasantly unsettling vive; Dave Jarrett<\/strong>\u2019s shimmering electric piano creates a moody ambience. \u201cMummy Was an Asteroid, Daddy Was a Small Non-stick Kitchen Utensil\u201d is nowhere near as wacky as its title might suggest. Instead it\u2019s a guitar skronkfest with glittering Caravan-styled keyboard runs, all delivered in an aggressive Starless and Bible Black<\/em> era King Crimson<\/strong> style.<\/p>\n

The highlight of \u201cTrot\u201d is a lovely piano solo from Jarrett. \u201cRongwrong\u201d has always been an oddity among oddities: it bears almost no similarity to a same-named track from the 801 Live<\/em> album; that latter version has straightforward vocals (courtesy of Brian Eno<\/strong>), but the one on Mainstream<\/em> is, like everything else on this difficult-yet-wonderful album \u2013 primarily instrumental. Here, when the vocals do appear, they\u2019re quite different \u2013 both in content and delivery. They\u2019re every bit as off-kilter as the rest of the sounds coming out of Mainstream<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The 2011 reissue of this oft-unavailable record is lovingly packaged in a hardcover case, making it look a bit like an old Hardy Boys<\/em> or Nancy Drew<\/em> book. Now released on Manzanera\u2019s own Expression Records label, the reissue includes a detailed booklet complete with multiple essays, review reprints, photos and miscellany. Five bonus tracks add context; an early demo \u201cYears of the Quiet Sun\u201d finds the band sounding a bit like very early King Crimson without the Mellotron and vocals. A modern-day recording of the band members reminiscing about the album and sessions wraps the package up nicely, finally telling the Quiet Sun Mainstream<\/em> story as it deserves to be told.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Perversely titled Mainstream, the sole release by avant-prog-jazz outfit Quiet Sun is in fact as far from that adjective as can be imagined. Recorded in between sessions for Phil Manzanera\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review","cat-65-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30778,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions\/30778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}