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Beat Instrumental SEPTEMBER 1974 - by Del Robinson

ANDY MACKAY: IN SEARCH OF EDDIE RIFF

This album could be retitled 'the many moods of a rock and roll sax player' and it has that same Roxy Music feeling of creating something new out of old themes, instead of being a pale distorted parody of them. Mackay's ever cool superhep sax brays, rasps, burbles and sings its way through such unlikely track-mates as Wagner's Ride Of The Valkyries (wonder where Mackay got that idea from?), a superbly melancholic The End Of The World, the plain raunchy Walking The Whippet, the soulful Jimmy Ruffin's What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted, and the unbelievable - A Four Legged Friend (wasn't that something to do with Roy Rogers?). Who knows, maybe that was the first piece that Andy ever learned. Apart from the other tracks, which I won't bother to mention, the collection is rounded off by Schubert's An Die Musik - obviously Mackay who also oboes and attempts some vocalisation favours the Teutonic school of classical composers.

This beautiful album is just the thing to seduce by, as Andy's sax discharges its mellifluous burps, assisted by a variety of instrumentalists including PhilManzanera (guitar and 'saxophone treatment'), Eddie Jobson (piano, organ, synthesiser, glockenspiel, violin and strings), Roger Glover (bass guitar) and the mysterious 'Countess' Sadie MacKenzie who provides 'ethereal voice'.

This really is a superb album - all the office is raving about it, but we're confused about its raison d'être and other such linguistic problems. How does it manage to be so 1962 and '74 at the same time? Why is this unashamedly self-indulgent record so good? Quite simply Mackay the Supersax must be a genius - it'll be interesting to see if the record-buying public think so. In any case I hope he finds the 'D' riff he's looking for.