Flaming Tunes featured This Heat member Gareth Williams and longtime friend Mary Currie. Their sole self-titled release was a home-recorded effort originally put out in 1985 on cassette with hand-painted covers. Look for the San Francisco-based archival label Superior Viaduct to re-issue the collection on vinyl this coming September.
Following his involvement with This Heat, Williams traveled to India to study classical Kathakali dance, and the experience would go on to inform his work as Flaming Tunes. The album’s 11 songs were recorded in an old Victorian home in South London using whatever instruments were on hand. Sometimes working with This Heat guitarist Charles Bullen, as well as long-term collaborators Martin Harrison and Rick Wilson (The Work), the duo recorded by day while Mary’s young son attended school. Williams would then conduct tape treatments during the evening shaping the unique recordings
Below you can hear the tracks “Beguiling The Hours” and “The Best Weapon.” Both efforts are charged with a very peculiar creative energy seemingly conjured from the motley collection of instruments and collaborators on hand. Joyfully out-of-step with the music of the day, Flaming Tunes create a magick world where late ’60s Canterbury psych-folk meets more experimental forms of songcraft.
