BLONDE ON BLONDE (taking their name from BOB DYLAN's 1966 album) were formed in Newport, South Wales in 1967 by drummer Les Hicks, bass guitar / keyboard player Richard Hopkins and guitar / sitar and lute player Gareth Johnson. The vocalist / guitarist Ralph Denyer was found via Melody Maker magazine, and Simon Lawrence joined the band playing 12-string guitar. Signed to Pye Records, they released their debut Contrasts in 1969 – a collection of psychedelic proto-prog songs, with a couple of souped up cover versions thrown in for good measure.

In doing so, they perfected a blend of guitars, sitars, abstract percussion, flute and the ever-faithful keyboard contingent.

‘Ride with Captain Max’ is a powerful start to Contrasts with breakneck guitars and a rhythm section playing as though the devil’s at its heels; giving way to mellow lyrical passages of acid-infused ponderings on “flying high”. This is quickly followed by the flute and sitar-charged, kaleidoscopic playground that is ‘Spinning Wheel’, a lysergic single malt distilled into a bottle of less than three minutes. And that’s just for starters.

Want more? Then the third track is a bracing version of the Incredible String Band’s ‘No Sleep Blues’. Yes, you read that right, the wonderful (early)Incredible String Band -- a song just screaming to be set free -- Blonde on Blonde’s rendering is hearty stuff and one of the highlights of Contrasts.

There’s also a cover version of The Beatles’ hymn of loneliness, ‘Eleanor Rigby’, on hand, substituting the orchestral accompaniment of the original for a stirring different style of backing arrangement. The Elizabethan-style olde-worlde psych of ‘Island on an Island’ is another notable example of the many pleasures that Contrasts has to offer.

Ride With Captain Max starts out a bit of a typical 1960s number, with Mod overtones - think of a highly energetic and less quaint Kaleidoscope or the Small Faces and you're part way there. There's also a smattering of heavy blues a la Yardbirds or even Cream - but it's the Who-like energy that is most noticeable. This drops to a fairly typical sounding acoustic guitar-driven psych song passage, which in turn gives way to a much more boisterous and darker heavy rock passage. Back to the acoustic guitar, and the lyrics get a restatement, with a cross-rhythmic percsussion section, and back to the hi-energy. This structuring approach reminds me of a simplified version of the Clouds. There's no mistaking the catchy rock-pop flavour of this song though.

Spinning Wheel is a grin-inducing sitar-driven affair, with a catchy and simple little melody over an oom-pah bass that gets rather irritating after a while - but you can see the intent here, to conjour up the spinning wheel image, and empahsise a kind of Raga flavour at the same time. There is no let up in the energy.

No Sleep Blues is an entertaining interpretation of the Incredible String Band song, full of angelic slide guitar, tempo change, and such a connection with the original spirit of the piece, that if the ICB had ever rocked up, this is probably what they would have sounded like.

Goodbye reminds even more strongly of the Clouds, although with the organ taking a more back seat role, and classical music merely hinted at with tinkling harpsichord lines.

I Need My Friend shows a return to heavy blues rock, with some nice twists, hints at the style of the Spencer Davis Group - but infused with some original melodic ideas and a real feel of the changeover in rock style from the late 1960s to the early 1970s.

Mother Earth is altogether a more sophisticated composition, still in a heavy blues rock vein, but with a more progressive atmosphere overlaying the repetitive riffs of the parent form. The chorus seems designed to be sungalong in a stadium, while the breakdown before the instrumental carries an late-night bar-gig intimacy about it.

What a contrast for the B-Side - the cover of Eleanor Rigby starts with an almost unrecognisable introduction, and replaces the string quartet with an insistent acoustic and gentle percussion - and a trumpet. With this interpretation, you'd think that the song had been written by the guys on Blonde on Blonde themselves. Your mileage may vary, but there's so much to like in this version that you may be hard pushed to say whether the original was better than this or not.

Next up, back to 1960s psychedelia, with "Conversationally Making The Grade" a large dash of Small Faces, Cream and all manner of other popular bands, making for something that you'd think would sound a bit cheesey and derived - but instead, thanks to the high-energy so typical of this album, creating a style that is original and yet a product of the times simultaneously. The track catches you unaware, with its simplicity and ever-shifting strands of sonic goodness.

A folk flavour infuses the short instrumental Regency, giving the feel of an interlude in a greater whole, with some really nice counterpoint providing excellent movement.

The folk feeling continues in the intro to Island on an Island - pity the recorder is almost a quarter of a tone out of tune, but here it does lend an authentic flavour to a song that conjoures up images on a Celtic shoreline in a summer twighlight in the fabric of the music.

Don't Be Too Long maintains the folk feel, spinning a tale of separation.

The album ends with Jeanette Isabella, another song that could have been written by Clouds, with lush Hammond organ backing filling in the space around the guitar nicely, as the pleasantly faintly hoarse vocals tell the story.