The Penrose Web – It’s…The Penrose Web: 7″ EP

Description

Allan Crockford and Ian Button probably first nodded a cursory “Alright?” to each other in 1986 when their respective bands – The Prisoners and Thrashing Doves – were on the same bill supporting a late-era Ramones at Hammersmith Palais.

Their histories from that point are fairly well known. Crockford moved on after The Prison[1]ers into the James Taylor Quartet, The Solar Flares and beyond, while Button followed up Thrashing Doves with 10+ years as guitarist for Death In Vegas before moving more into production, and his own projects.

The two current bands they lead – The Galileo 7 and Papernut Cambridge – have been operating out of Kent for the last decade or more…paths have crossed…gigs have been done together.records have been exchanged.

In summer 2023, a casual conversation at a Rochester covers night run by Kevin Younger of The High Span led to Button and Crockford deciding to start a new project together. They began swapping backing tracks, song skeletons, lyrics and ideas, and very quickly had enough raw material for an album, and a project name – The Penrose Web.

As you’d expect, they both bring items from their own musical wardrobes to this: their own takes on sunshine pop, psych, garage, (northern) soul and indie combine in a set of dual-vocal led songs with layered harmonies and crisp punchy production. Crockford’s Medway credentials and Button’s SE London via Kent Coast retro pop chops merge geo-musically somewhere halfway along the M20.

Their first EP It’s….The Penrose Web is a 7-inch 4-song mix of sinister horror garage (“Hexapod Scene”, “I Dreamt I Woke Up Dead”), phased mod energy (“Leap of Faith”) and no-frills power-pop (“Geraldine”) – and it’s one of the first records pressed on a new bioplastic compound called Evovinyl.

Track list:

A1 Hexapod Scene

A2 I Dreamt I Woke Up Dead

A3 Leap Of Faith

A4 Geraldine