The Melbourne-based Spectrum was a highly regarded Australian progressive psych rock band that came together in 1969 around its central figure, expatriate New Zealand guitarist/singer/songwriter, Mike Rudd. In its formative year Spectrum played covers of work by its contemporaries, such established psychedelic / progressive artists like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and Traffic before developing a style of its own.
Many fans will tell you that Spectrum music is some of the greatest progressive psych rock recorded in the day, and nominate the band as purveyors of a uniquely Australian sound and identity. Spectrum's debut, Part One was originally released on EMI's progressive label Harvest and is rightfully regarded as not only a landmark progressive rock release, but the beginnings of one of Australia 's more remarkable bands. Aztec Music's deluxe reissue of Part One has 7 bonus tracks…

The Melbourne-based Spectrum was a highly regarded Australian progressive psych rock band that came together in 1969 around its central figure, expatriate New Zealand guitarist/singer/songwriter, Mike Rudd. In its formative year Spectrum played covers of work by its contemporaries, such established psychedelic / progressive artists like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine and Traffic before developing a style of its own. The Spectrum sound was formed around Neale's skilled Hammond organ playing - mostly without the use of a Leslie speaker cabinet - and Rudd's extraordinary finger-picking guitar style (a style he reportedly used to avoid being compared to the more accomplished guitarists of the time), his often humorous and offbeat song titles and lyrics, plus his unusual and distinctive voice. Add to these two the very skilled and reliable rhythm section of Putt and Kennedy and the Spectrum equation is complete…

Violinist Irvine Arditti, pianist Claude Helffer, and the Spectrum ensemble conducted by Guy Protheroe produce consummate performances of the Greek avant-gardist's unwieldy chamber music. If you're familiar with Xenakis's career you'll know he was trained in mathematics and enjoyed a successful career as an architect. Such background might prepare you for the music's preoccupation with line, volume, and form in an unusually abstract way, but it won't prepare you for its visceral, almost primitive power. On Akanthos, the singer Penelope Walmsley-Clark must cope with what is surely one of the most ridiculous soprano parts ever written.