See Also: Neneh Cherry, The Pop Group, No New York, etc.

If it’s difficult for classic rockers to make an attention-getting comeback, imagine what lies in store for the highly influential cult artist.

I find that when writing about the less-well-known music types, it’s always nice to start with someone famous and then proceed Six Degrees of Separation style to your target.

So, everyone remembers Neneh Cherry and her hit Buffalo Stance? Good. She is/was jazz legend Don Cherry’s stepdaughter (and even if you’ve never heard any jazz, you may have run into Don soloing on a Lou Reed or Bongwater album). You might also know the Cherry family via Eagle-Eye Cherry, though if that’s the only name that rings a bell, I’m a little sad.

Anyway, before she was Neneh Cherry, she was the lead singer of a group called Rip Rig & Panic, named after a Rholand Kirk album (more jazz). If you watched MTV in the 80’s, you might have seen an episode of The Young Ones where Rick suddenly remarks, apropos not much, something like, “What about Rip Rig & Panic?” whereupon the band burst out with their single “You’re My Kind of Climate.” I recall being underwhelmed at the time, though I might feel differently today.

One member of Rip Rig & Panic was Gareth Sager, who may or may not be best known for having played guitar in The Pop Group, whose Y album has very gradually gotten a rep as a must-hear for fans of the NYC No Wave document (produced by Brian Eno) No New York. I’d guess that some blog or other has posted the track “We Are All Prostitutes” by The Pop Group sometime in the past year or so.

But let’s pass over the No Wave thing, since Gareth’s 2003 album The Last Second of Normal Time doesn’t have much of anything to do with No Wave. It is, however, a curiously overlooked mini-classic with one foot in jazz noire, one foot in Eno-land, and an elbow poking into some giddy Carla Bley territory circa Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports (a very good and extremely un-Pink Floyd sounding solo album ostensibly by Pink Floyd’s drummer, though it was essentially a Carla Bley/Robert Wyatt collaboration.) The fact that the female vocalist on Gareth’s album sounds quite a bit like Carla Bley’s daughter Karen Mantler only emphasizes that last comparison.

The Last Second of Normal Time came out on Scotland’s Creeping Bent label, best known to many for being home to Nectarine No. 9. I knew it best as the label that put out the first official Adventures In Stereo CD back in the day. (There was also a first unofficial Adventures In Stereo album, but that’s another story. Google “Simon Dine” + “Adventures In Stereo” if you’re desperate to know the details).

After that lead up, it’s unfortunately impossible to describe the diversities of “The Last Second of Normal Time” globally in any particularly meaningful way. While unified on a diffuse level, it’s safe to say that no two songs sound alike. This may be part of the reason why it’s gotten not so much press (at least in the US) since its release. Other reasons for lack of press: deciding that “Gareth Sager” wasn’t obscure enough, the label released the album credited to “C.C. Sager” which was apparently “the name of the band.” Regardless, jazz-tinged-dubby-experimental-pop mixed-with-film-score-instrumentals seems to fall somewhat low on the totem pole much of the time, so even if it had been credited to “The Pop Group’s Gareth Sager, You Know, Like Neneh Cherry and No New York and Stuff” I doubt this would have topped the charts.

Enough history. If you can find a love for the Deux Filles sounding instrumental “Porthmadog 1926” and the Solex-meets-a-catchy-chorus “Hector Vino Nectar,” this might be your favorite 2006 album that didn’t come out in 2006 (even though you might think it did, since it shows up with a 2006 date in a few places on the internet. Apparently Creeping Bent has only recently gotten into the online download biz.).

[by guest contributor Dana Paoli]