(Progressive Rock) Dark - Round the Edges - 1972, MP3, 320 kbps

Masterpiece from hard-progressive music.
20b remastered CD reissue on the PROGRESSIVE LINE label. This is the world's rarest LP... 50 copies were made in 1972, each one costs GBP2000+. It is a limited edition CD from the master tapes with 4 extra tracks from 1971.
This legendary progressive rock band, which was responsible for the UK's most expensive album, was formed by Steve Giles whilst at school in Northampton in 1968. They met local entrepreneur Alan Bowley who'd recently converted a derelict house into a recording studio, and this led to four acetates of "RC8" and "In The Sky".
They performed at a few local gigs, and as their playing got tighter, decided to go into SIS Studios, Northampton, with engineer Alan Bowley, to record an album. The six tracks, written and arranged by the band were recorded over a weekend in 1972 and consist of melodic progressive rock laced with lots of fuzzy guitar riffs. Only a handful of copies were pressed, and Giles, who had a strong interest in photography, made the first twelve copies into full-colour gatefold sleeves, complete with booklets of photographs stapled together, augmented with handwritten notes. They were handed out to band members and their girlfriends! These are now valued at ?1,500 by Record Collector who valued copies which came with a black and white gatefold sleeve at ?1,350, and those which came in a single black and white sleeve - at ?1,200 in their December 1993 issue. A total of 65 copies were reissued in all and each came with a lyric booklet and sold originally for ?3!
The band then split with Clive and Martin going their own ways, and Steve and Ron continuing to record for their own pleasure until 1977 when Ron married and moved to Cornwall.
Kissing Spell traced the band in 1991 to tell them the original album was worth a small fortune, and offering to reissue it on vinyl and CD. A re-issue had been done on vinyl in the States, followed by Kissing Spell's efforts. The members then got back together and decided to see if they could still play. Previously unrecorded tracks were dusted off, more material written, and Dark re-entered the studio world in 1994 at Outrider Studios, Northampton, over twenty years after their first outing. A couple of tracks were laid down before the studio went bust, and Dark moved on to Far Heath Studios in Guilsborough, where the album, "Anonymous Days", was completed in 1996. It was issued on CD in a limited edition of 500, twenty-five years after "Dark Round The Edges". Word got around that the band were playing again and offers of live gigs started to come in. They decided to do just one hail/farewell gig, which turned out to be the Northampton Beer Festival, on May 31st, 1997. The local brewery, Frog Island, brewed a special limited edition bottled beer in the gig's honour, which sold for ?2.50. The label being a copy of the CD cover of "Dark Round The Edges".
If you want to discover what their music was like, track down one of the relatively recent vinyl or CD reissues of the original "Dark Round The Edges" before investigating any of the plethora of retrospectives. Kissing Spell, have also, incidentally, issued a CD by Martin Weaver's power trio Wicked Lady, entitled "The Axeman Cometh" (Kissing Spell KSCD 9307) in 1993. Martin Weaver (from Wicked Lady) was an ancillary member of Dark.

Steve Giles (guitars, vocals)
Martin Weaver (guitar) (Wicked Lady)
Ronald Johnson (bass)
Clive Thorneycroft (drums, percussion)