Warm Dust - It's A Beautiful Day/ Magic Worm

 

Paul Carrack of Ace in early jazz prog mode

Label: Trend

Year of Release: 1971

Warm Dust is a very inviting band name for a record collector, evoking those summer days spent on your knees in dusty old second hand shops and bazaars, rifling through cartons of records coated in fluff... or perhaps the accumulated dust bunnies you pluck off the record players stylus, hot from the latest vinyl rotation... mmm, nice, even if these possibly aren't the images they were trying to put in people's minds.

The group possibly aren't every vinyl lover's cup of tea, though, being from that awkward, unfashionable and frequently pretentious progressive jazz rock genre. And it's certainly true to say that some of their material veered close to the pompous; their 1970 debut LP was entitled "Peace In Our Time" and subtitled "Neville Chamberlain 30th September 1938" and contained a lot of fussy, busy rhythms alongside the unexpectedly pretty melodies. 

While their excesses seem rather quaint from our current perspective, they weren't the kind of fools to let musicianship overshadow songwriting ideas, and both sides of this single are brief windows into that side of their world. "It's A Beautiful Day" is a jaunty skip through summer replete with puffing flutes and keen vocal melodies. Over on the flip, on the other hand, gives them a bit more room to stretch out and use the full ensemble to huge effect with some of the proggy fussiness leaking through. 

At this point, the group consisted of Terry Comer on bass and recorder, Dave Pepper on drums, Dransfield Walker on lead vocals and guitar, Paul Carrack on piano, organ and guitar, and John Surgey and Alan Soloman on sax. Of the gang, Comer and Carrack are probably the most famed, both moving on to form Ace in the mid-seventies whose deathless "How Long" single has been dropping its way into everyone's late night taxi ride soundtracks ever since. 

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