Then! (album)
"Then!" is a 2003 live album by Allan Holdsworth. Allan’s second official live album followed close on the heels of “All Night Wrong”. It was also recorded in Japan, but feature the “Hard Hat Area” band (Gary, Skuli and Steve) touring in 1990, prior to recording that album. The centerpieces of the album are the three improvised “Zones”, that Allan would regularly do in his live sets. Note that this album is credited to the "Allan Holdsworth Group".
Contents
Track listing
| Track title | Composer | Length | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Zone I | Holdsworth/Husband/Hunt/Sverrison | 4:08 |
| 2. | Proto-Cosmos | Pasqua | 5:42 |
| 3. | White Line | Holdsworth/Brown | 9:39 |
| 4. | Atavachron | Holdsworth | 4:42 |
| 5. | Zone II | Holdsworth/Husband/Hunt/Sverrison | 5:30 |
| 6. | Pud Wud | Holdsworth | 8:05 |
| 7. | House Of Mirrors | Holdsworth | 4:26 |
| 8. | Non-Brewed Condiment | Holdsworth | 5:44 |
| 9. | Zone III | Holdsworth/Husband/Hunt/Sverrison | 7:39 |
| 10. | Funnels (Bonus Track For Japan) | Holdsworth | 7:10 |
Allan Holdsworth: Guitar
Gary Husband: Drums
Jimmy Johnson: Bass
Steve Hunt: Keyboards
Allan did not make many references to this album, but he might have been referring to it here:
On The Level (IM&RW 1991)
IM - I heard rumours of a live album that you were doing or that you had in the can.
"We did do one but I didn’t like it. I’m gonna try another one. We did it in Japan and I was using these little tiny speaker boxes. There is a law of physics, if stuff gets too small it just sounds like that. It sort of interferred with my playing. It was alright but it wasn’t what I wanted out of a live album. I just wanted it to be really happening."
Creating Imaginary Backdrops (Innerviews 1993)
What about the possibility of a live album?
Well, we did a live album, but nobody liked it. We recorded it in Japan one year and the general consensus was that it wasn’t happening. It’ll never come out.
Is that something you’d like to do eventually?
I would like to yeah! Especially with all the bootlegs. In fact, we were thinking about releasing an official bootleg record. Since there are so many bootlegs out there, we figured we might as well give the guys in the band a choice of what nights were okay as opposed to the ones which weren’t. So Gary Husband recorded some gigs with his DAT player. Some are pretty good too. I mean they’re live—that’s the thing I like about them. They’re not like the studio-live albums—in other words, you get a supposedly live album that sounds like the worst studio album you’ve heard in your life. That is definitely something I want to avoid. In fact, the microphone in the back of the room seems to be a good way to go for me. You always get that feeling of a live performance. From now on, I think we’re going to carry DAT machines around and record gigs.
Links
Album playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hpu-shkUtP0&list=OLAK5uy_keef6R2bNcDF7bfLiiXHiNtycPsqWm8Es
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Then!
Discogs: https://www.discogs.com/master/931707-Allan-Holdsworth-Group-Then
Ed's blog: http://threadoflunacy.blogspot.no/2017/09/24-wardenclyffe-tower-1992-and-then.html
