The eponymous track from 1983's Polarities opens the album with synthesiser and delayed and double-tracked flute, a characteristic combination from Harris's electroacoustic whakapapa (e.g., Inner Worlds' 'Fluchtig'). Midway through the track, primitive drum machine, distorted vocals, bass and electric guitar, and a much more organ-y synth, take the improvising Free Radicals into eighties Tangerine Dream territory, though perhaps with more unfettered zeal than their cold kraut contemporaries. Elsewhere they channel Laurie Anderson's 'From the Air' (on 'Space Music'), Vangelis's soundtrack work ('Summer Rain') and David Borden's Mother Mallard ('Water Music'), though all in an unbuttoned, breezy style.
You Know, We Can See Through the Roof of Your House
(i) (1987)
1987's mini-album (i) opens with what sounds like a pitch-shifted John Cousins marrying Eraserhead's Henry with Cabaret Voltaire as the wedding band. Second track 'don't ask' feels like Seventeen Seconds-era The Cure had been listening to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, while first side closer 'my lips are moving' is a sort of lime and limpid green Fripp & Eno outtake. It's altogether a tighter and more rhythmic side than the second, upon whose black expanse the opaque, capacious 'Red Shift' sits, effing with the fabric of time.
Expect the Greatest Measure of Earthly Happiness
