“We'd all been listening to stuff like In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Then Weather Report came along around 1971 and really got us thinking. At our first gig, at the Rosebuck in Chislehurst, Richmond [Dunckley] had to plug his Minimoog in with a ton of other stuff behind the fruit machine. Of course the whole lot overloaded and blew up! The audience thought they were getting some kind of Jean-Michel Jarre light show! Burnt down half the pub.” Not exactly the Shibuya Kokaido Hall, Tokyo – scene of Weather Report's sell-out January '72 concert – but drummer Cliff Purbeck's reminiscence gives a flavour of the British fusion scene in the early 1970s. The Sidcup Sessions were recorded over a four-day period when the band didn't leave the studio (leader Phil Netherwitton's lock-up garage) and subsisted on cheese sandwiches and warm beer. The result was a mish-mash of material that occasionally leaks out into the public arena like a faulty keg of Double Diamond. The liner notes explain that the four tracks on Vol. 1 are named after Met Offi ce sea areas. ‘German Bight’ is a terse, oblique opener with short stabs of sound from what we assume is Dave Satchel's trumpet (Satchel, a part-time gas-fi tter from Petts Wood, apparently made his own instruments), underpinned by engulfing lower register pomposity from Dunckley's synth. By contrast ‘Biscay’ is positively jaunty, Netherwitton laying down an engaging funk bassline. However, his interplay with Hickwick's soprano is interrupted by Satchel's off-mic (but clearly audible) “Anyone seen my fags? Where are my bleedin' fags?” The two concluding tracks – ‘Dogger’ and ‘Rockall’ – meld into one another, Purbeck ramping up the aggression with a series of crash cymbal splashes and Dunckley playing a succession of tumbling figures that sound like a man in a felt suit falling down a thickly carpeted staircase. This critic's opinion? “Occasionally rough at first, becoming variable”.