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Metro and Duncan Browne on one album
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Author:  doc [ Tue Nov 20, 2018 4:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Metro and Duncan Browne on one album

I just feel I have to tell you about a very special album. I know that several people here are familiar with the late Duncan Browne and Metro, but I guess most of you aren’t.
He contributed to IMHO 3 of the best releases in the late seventies: The first Metro album and two solo albums called “The Wild Places” and “Streets of Fire”.
These 3 lps are now available on a 2 CD-set for about £10. Can't see it on Spotify or anywhere else to stream.
The direct "Roxy et al" link is Simon Phillips from “801 Live”. If you care to read the All Music reviews below you’ll see descriptions of an artist a la Roxy and BF, but darker. Wonderful music.
David Bowie did btw cover a Metro song.
In 1993 Duncan Browne sadly died of cancer.

All Music on Metro by Dave Thompson:
Contemplate the death of glam rock and any number of mortifying factors can be weighed, from the over-abundance of ultimately faceless teen idols to the under-exposure of the handful of bands who could have respangled the old star-studded sham. But timing also came into it, and if you want to talk about missing the boat, Metro never even found the harbor. Metro was released in early 1977, but it belonged to late 1974. Not to be confused for a moment with the later incarnation of the band that danced through the early '80s, the original Metro comprised vocalists Duncan Browne and Peter Godwin -- Godwin alone carried the flag into the future. Smartly suited on the cover of their only album together, the pair resembles flamboyant gangsters, caught unaware on a brightly lit film set. Step into Metro, however, and the only illumination is the flame of a few guttering candles, and the only laughter comes from a champagne party winding down in the penthouse upstairs. It's an album of velvet-layered secrets and satin-sheeted mysteries, where lovers wear lace and have hearts carved from jade and the string section swells to save your ego the bother. Lavish choirs, murmuring synths...Cockney Rebel and the Doctors of Madness both glanced in a similar direction, but, though a synth pop group later kidnapped the phrase's true meaning, Metro was the original orchestral maneuvers in the dark, with only Bryan Ferry on hand to drive the survivors home. The symphonic "One Way Night," a profession of a love that needs more than a word of explanation, and the agitated drama of "Black Lace Shoulder," regretting a failure to live up to such standards, cloak the album like giant bat wings, vast and comforting, but dark and leathern all the same. And they have no hesitation in scooping you up and away, through the fires that dance on "Flame"'s romantic Seine and into a criminal world of such brutal conflict that even "the girls are like baby-faced boys." Long before David Bowie wrapped calcifying fingers round its alabaster throat and hauled it away to Let's Dance land, "Criminal World" dominated Metro, both musically and thematically, setting a stage for a black sexuality that leaves you feeling somehow soiled, whether you (think you) understand the song or not. Certainly British radio realized something very dark and dingy was happening, as it banned the single version of the song without even asking for an edit. The 45 bombed, the album sank, and, by the end of the year, the original group had gone the same way. The album, however, remains a dirty secret, a secret sin, a sinful pleasure, and glam rock's final gleaming. How unlike it to leave the best till last.



AllMusic Review by Bruce Eder on The Wild Places
Following his stint in the group Metro with Sean Lyons and Peter Godwin, Duncan Browne turned up in 1978 with his first solo album since the dawn of the '70s. The Wild Places isn't much like his Immediate album Give Me, Take You -- indeed, it's more like a lost Roxy Music album, or perhaps a lost Bryan Ferry record. It's electric, and the music has a sense of drama as well as beautiful melodies that were even better realized, with lush contributions on the synthesizer and related keyboards by Tony Hymas and a fierce guitar sound courtesy of Browne himself, aided by the upfront presence of John Giblin and Simon Phillips on bass and drums, respectively. The music runs the gamut from edgy progressive rock to straight-ahead rock & roll (the latter highlighted by "The Crash"), though Browne was at the top of his game, as both a singer and composer, working in an introspective, romantic vein, as on the killer title cut and numbers like "Roman Vecu" and "Kisarazu." Long out of print in the United States, The Wild Places was reissued on CD during late 2000 in Japan.

AllMusic Review by Bruce Eder on Streets of fire
Duncan Browne's second late-'70s album was even better than its predecessor, or at least the first half of it was -- the music on side one more easily accommodates his melodies and a rocking beat, and the influence of progressive rock is largely muted, subsumed into Tony Hymas' synthesizer work. Browne wrote some of the prettiest music of his career (and that is saying something) for this album's first side, and as a producer he knew exactly how to get the most out of it, bringing in saxman Dick Morrisey for "Fallen Angel"; his guitar playing also achieved new heights of virtuosity on the riveting title cut, an instrumental that, at times, resembles a coherent jam by the mid-'70s-era King Crimson. Side two is slightly less engaging, as though he ran out of really first-rate material, and has fewer memorable melodies. Reissued on CD in Japan in late 2000.

Author:  doc [ Wed Nov 21, 2018 9:21 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Metro and Duncan Browne on one album

I forgot the name of the artist/album:

Artist:
"Duncan Browne featuring Metro"

Album name:
"Planet Earth: The Transatlantic / Logo Years (1976-1979)"

Label: Cherry Tree
ASIN: B06XSMMX97

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