Customer Reviews

Cosmic Peekaboo

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It has been almost 30 years since the Free Design made an album. Light and airy music with a backbone. This kind of music never found a mass audience before. How could anyone take a song about flying a kite seriously? And yet that was the magic of this group. Something seemingly ordinary and innocent is celebrated precisely because it is ordinary and innocent. Their songs of the past were about kites,bubbles,fluffernutters and,oh yeah,a relative getting killed in Vietnam and the insanity of that war. Light and airy with a viewpoint. An oxymoron? This new album is both a continuation from 1972 and a nod to the new millenium. Songs about Springtime,the break of day,playing "Peekaboo" continue themes of celbrating the ordinary and innocent. It is the act of celebration that makes this music so special. The blending of sibling voices Sandy,Chris and Bruce Dedrick with an added plus of vocalist/pianist/co-producer Rebecca Pellet cut straight to the heart. If you have the domestic compilation of their Project 3 material"Kites Are Fun"(Varese 5954} you won't be disappointed with the Free Design of 2001. It may have been worth the wait. But lets hope it is not another30 years for the next installment.

I guess true genius never fades.

Similar to Brian Wilson's first solo album from 1988, "Cosmic Peekaboo" is evidence that a beloved sound can evolve and mature while retaining many of the characteristics that one would expect from pop legends.

All the sounds and vibes that Free Design fans know and love from their 60s' recordings are still present - listen to the fade out refrain on "Peekaboo", or Bruce Dedrick's "McCarran Airport" and "Springtime" and experience the type of pop thrill that today's Free Design fans (i.e. Stereolab, Saint Etienne, High Llamas, etc.) try to replicate.

The melody and class have always been there - now there's "experience" in the Free Design formula. Many of Cosmic's songs couldn't have been written by a 20 year old Chris Dedrick. A melancholic, mature vibe (it was always there - even in a children's song like "Daniel Dolphin") is evident in a number of the tracks on the new record. "Day Breaks" is a genuinely moving experience.

Chris Dedrick has written an introduction to the cd that explains where they've been and what prompted the release. Like the music contained within, the CD is packaged in a way that reflects The Free Design in 2001.

It's on Marina - a label that has become increasingly familiar to those who look for quality.

Highly recommended.

Oh well, this record is simply gorgeooooous. I loved the original sixties recordings by the Free Design, and this brandnew album features all their classic trademarks: stunning vocal harmonies, unusual & unique songwriting, great thoughtful lyrics and truly mindblowing arrangements. A favourite track on this album is the great "Springtime", already a classic song in its own right (if you ask me). Think of Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks trying to write a hit single - and then SUCCEED. In a better universe this would be a smash hit. This album is a treat for each fan of classic, well arranged pop music in a Beach Boys/Harpers Bizarre vein. Beautiful albums like this are so rare, don't hesitate to buy it. This is really worth all your cash!

The music of the Free Design was a part of the fabric of my life in the late 60's/early 70's. The intricate harmonies and intimate feelings shared by this family somehow cut through the psychedelic pomposities of the time and did what my favorite music always does: IT MAKES YOU FEEL GREAT! To possess a new CD by the FD in the new millenium is nothing short of a miracle. The sound is unchanged: the layered vocals, the floating interjections of flute and recorder, the challenging compositions of Chris Dedrick are all intact. Missing in action is the beguiling voice of Ellen, although co-producer Rebecca Pellet deputizes well for her. Bruce's pipes are a bit rustier than before, but Chris' delight in recollaborating with his brother is evident. It's so grand to hear music this honest, without a hint of gadgetry or synthesizer. Track 7, "The Hook", makes a sly dig at the triumph of machine over man in today's pop scene.......it's the "cute" tune of the set. Standout songs include the title tune and "McCarran Airport", kind of a "Leaving on a Jet Plane" for the 2000s. If you like the Free Design at all, you should be enjoying this CD as soon as possible without compunction. If you are unfamiliar with the group, order the "Best Of" or the too-expensive Japanese issue of "You Could Be Born Again" along with "Cosmic Peekaboo".........you won't be sorry. If all Free Design fans purchase the new set, maybe we'll persuade the Dedricks to continue their excellence with further new recordings. I certainly hope so. Music like this is too precious to take for granted.

When I heard The Free Design would be releasing an album of all-new material, I was both shocked and elated! I consider all of their albums on Project3 from 1967-72 to be the most valuable albums in my collection. I wish I was a musicologist so I could do some justice in describing their sound but I'm not. So, I will tell you how their songs make me feel. Their music makes me feel like I am both smiling on the inside and spiritually flying. Tonally it is pure and devoid of any commercial hackery. It is like sitting down to a splendid home-cooked meal where all the guests you are in the company of are just as important to the experience as the original secret ingredients of the meal tantalizing your palate. The themes of their new songs are just as universal as their older work; love, loss, the joy of children, and family. Play these songs on a rainy afternoon in a house with wooden floors and plenty of greenery surrounding it for ambience and mood. If you have just caught onto the beauty that is The Free Design then you are that rare individual who has been let in on one of America's best "Kind Of Hushes" that's been around for over 30 years. Enjoy! Now Chris,when are you guys going to get together and do a full Christmas album?

There are two stellar tracks on this: "McCarran Airport," sounding like a lost Jimmy Webb classic, and the wistfully gorgeous "Spring Time." A quick look at the credits show they're the only two from the pen of brother Bruce. As for the rest -- think Kenny G meets H/D/H. Sadly, that stands for Hallmark/Doggerel/Hallmark. And that's too bad, as the vocals and sparse arrangements are right on the money. If there's to be a follow-up, give Bruce free reign.

This is an album rich with great songs and all the exquisite harmonies and vocal warmth that Free Design fans back in the 70s loved so much. It's a 'reunion' of the original members of the group and their sound is better than ever!

Incidentally, the original 7 albums have just been re-released for a second time in the States and in Japan!

The Free Design were the best pop vocal band of the 1960s--the one you never heard. They had vocals that went head to head with The Association, the 5D, The Friends Of Distinction, any of the good guys. Obviously, they tore bands like the Lettermen to shreds without singing more then one note

These guys were, for some odd, inexplicable reason, one of those bands who got some progressive FM airplay around 1967, and disappeared. Who would have thought they were more welcome among Jimi Hendrix and the Blues Project than with Dionne Warwick and Paul Revere and the Raiders, but they were absent from 1960s top forty stations .

Maybe their jazzy sound and sophistication were too good to have them compete in the 1960s world of AM top forty radio. Whatever the case, they had six albums, and you should collect all this material. If you get the compilations Bubbles Raindropsand Umbrellas, you will basically have all these albums, not in running order, at a very nice price

Now if Free Design were a well kept secret, well, we all know what happens to secrets. In the 1990s, bands like Stereolab, High LLamas, and probably 1000s of crate digging DJs began to discover the jazzy hooks and fantastic square hipness of this long ago band, and by 2000, Free Design were one of those bands MUSIC people knew about. If you didn't know about them, you were neither doing your homework or listening to enough WMFU*. The Design were probably a lot more popular in 2000 than in 1968, and there were even remix albums made of their material. Start with Vol. 1-Redesigned (Remix Ep) [Vinyl] and go from there.

So it is natural, perhaps, that the Design would make an album of new material, and Cosmic Peekaboo is it.

How is it: well, not bad. In some ways, this band picks up where they left off: a lot of this music has a very 1960s, almost music theater like vibe. If anything, the composer of all the bands music knew his chords, and all the voices and complexity of the music derive from a 1960s pop craft style. Cosmic Peekaboo applies

Is it as good: not quite. Free Design back in the 1960s used a fantastic session band, back in the era of great working back up units. Lou Savicus was the bass player---I forget the others right now--and the albums had an open, funk jazz sound from the era when Stax and Motown was flooding their influence into virtually every American studio. Combine this with an open, analoge mixing style, and the airiness against the solid playing just worked wonders.

Cosmic Peekaboo was made in an entirely different era, and the playing and singing are perfect--too perfect. Obviously, a band of 50+ year olds can't recreate 1967, but with modern session players, digitized playing styles, and perfect buffers on all the singers voices, their is something missing. I hate genre, but this borders at times on Adult Contemporary, and this is not a good thing.

Those little mistakes, that quicksilver funkiness. those great little accidents that happened back in the era when songs were put onto tape in a day or two, wonderful warts and all, are gone/

Still, there is something very special about the fact that in 2000, this band was drawn back together and this music made. Brittney Spears was peaking, people were still listening to steroid boy bands, and though it was not 1967 all over, it warms the heart to know that people in 2000 were interested in music like the Free Design, and that the band came back and made an album to show that in the era of Oops!... I Did It Again and N'Sync, we can all aspire to something much smarter, and much, much better.

* WMFU are a free form station on New York Area radio and the internet. All kinds of music is played. I know them but get nothing from plugging them other than to turn you onto a musical goldmine. Have a look

When a friend of mine gave me a Free Design compilation CD for Christmas three years ago, I was instantly hooked. I'd never heard anything like them. The vocal harmonies were perfect. The music arrangements and recording quality were exquisite. One of my favorite recorded drum sounds ever is on "Bubbles", with its sharp snare and lazy tom-tom fills. The vocals of the Dedrick clan soared with youthful abandon, and although the songs were kind of silly, they came across as serious works of art. With Enoch Light at the helm, it was a happy psychedelic ship of beautiful sound. That ship sank with the release of their latest CD release, "Cosmic Peekaboo".

I'll admit I was worried about this new recording. It's hard to re-create something so great after 30 years of sitting idle and truthfully, the Free Design's voices sound really great. The problem is they didn't try to re-create anything. Instead, it sounds as if they spent last Christmas in Aspen with Kenny G, getting pointers on how to work "the cheese". The CD opens with a lilting alto sax melody, then gives way to the vocal, it seems all the songs start out this way. They would be just as much at home on "The Windham Hill Holiday Record". The formula of silly soft rock, that made all their old material so great, just doesn't work here.

In the liner notes, Chris Dedrick writes about how the interest in The Free Design has been building over the last few years, mainly in Europe and Japan. Perhaps it would have served Mr. Dedrick better to ask these new fans what they wanted to hear, or re-visit some of the material that made them fans in the first place. He could have even gone so far as to ask one of those new fans, Stereolab for example, to help him make the record. Perhaps then it would have been one of those fun, adventurous records that have become so familiar to all of us fans, and so indicative of The Free Design at their best.

Sorry Mr. Dedrick, but I think I'm bringing mine back.