I.O.U. (album): Difference between revisions
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[[File:IOU.jpg|right|200px]]"I.O.U." is an 1982 album by Allan Holdsworth, and his official debut as a leader. The genesis of the album is probably Allan's meeting with Gary Husband in 1979. After several lineup changes, the band entered a studio on a barge on the Thames, and recorded the album very quickly, presumably in 1981. The albums features some old tunes and ideas reworked by Allan from the "Velvet Darkness", "Gazeuse" and "The Things You See" albums, as well as never before recorded material. The lineup is [[Gary Husband]] on drums, [[Paul Carmichael]] on bass and [[Paul Williams]] on vocals. Allan sold all of his guitars to pay for the mixing. Allan and the band then moved to California in early 1982, where they self-released the album, and sold it by mail order and at gigs. The album would not get regular distribution until 1985. | [[File:IOU.jpg|right|200px]]"I.O.U." is an 1982 album by Allan Holdsworth, and his official debut as a leader. The genesis of the album is probably Allan's meeting with Gary Husband in 1979. After several lineup changes, the band entered a studio on a barge on the Thames, and recorded the album very quickly, presumably in 1981. The albums features some old tunes and ideas reworked by Allan from the "Velvet Darkness", "Gazeuse" and "The Things You See" albums, as well as never before recorded material. The lineup is [[Gary Husband]] on drums, [[Paul Carmichael]] on bass and [[Paul Williams]] on vocals. Allan sold all of his guitars to pay for the mixing. Allan and the band then moved to California in early 1982, where they self-released the album, and sold it by mail order and at gigs. The album would not get regular distribution until 1985. | ||
The album presents Allan's musical vision in full for the first time. From the first second of "The Things You See", it's all there: Allan plays a lightning-fast, fluid line over his own very personal harmonies. No one else played guitar like this at the time. And nobody sounded like this. Allan's lead sound here is a thing of wonder: Sustaining endlessly with the aid of amplifier distortion, it still sounds clean, and breathes in a way that distorted guitar rarely does. His chords are lush and full and wide, aided by visionary use of signal processing. Gary Husband's drums serve as a perfect, free flowing, yet hard hitting foil to Allan's playing. Bassist Paul Carmichael holds down the bottom with a remarkable ability to give the music a steady foundation (he is a "train" in the group on the same way Tony Newton was with Tony Williams). Layered into this unique soundscape on half the tunes, Paul Williams carries the melody with his own instantly recognizable voice. A timeless classic. | |||
=Track listing= | =Track listing= | ||
