Alan ( guitars), Brendan ( harmonicas) and Lucy ( percussion) recorded while rehearsing for Oysterbands' 2006 'Big Session'. Despite what that might suggest, this is a very polished piece of work that sound like it's from a long established group. The songs and vocals are all Alan Prosser's and of a uniformly high standard.

He doesn't sing a lot of lead in the day job but handles it with considerable assurance here and he writes some good lyrics as well. There's a lot of blues inflections: Maybelle uses the tune of My Babe with a middle eight grafted on, the excellent One Step Forward marries the Bo Diddley beat with a sense of menace ( aided by Randall playing a bodhran part that's a descendant of the drumming of Peggy Sue) and a stream -conciousness lyrics.

There's Indian and Arabic touches ( e.g. the harmonica on Maybe This Is A Good Time) in other songs and a lot that are just plain melodic. Walking Down The Road With You and You're The One are perhaps the easiest to imagine as Oysterband songs- which the former became on Meet You There- but they work perfectly well in this small scale acoustic setting.

Go to www.cantweb.co.uk/music/alan_prosser to hear the upbeat opening track Alvediston or visit www.oysterband.co.uk to order the CD.

Nick Beale

The story goes that Oysterband's Alan Prosser was rehearsing with harmonica virtuoso Brendan Power and percussionist Lucy Randall, ostensibly for the (Leicester) opening gig of 2006's Big Session 2 Festival, and they were so pleased with an impromptu recording of the rehearsal that they decided to issue it on disc. And it's an amazingly coherent 41 minutes' worth of music, one with which any established band would be very proud - so it might come as a surprise that the three hadn't previously worked together as a unit. The standard of music-making is high, fiery and committed, as is the quality of Alan's songwriting and singing (which you don't exactly get to hear such a lot of in the Oysterband context). All eleven of the songs are Alan's own compositions, but the only one that is likely to be familiar is Walkin' Down The Road With You, which appeared last year on the Oysters' mighty Meet You There - and it works just fine in this stripped-down acoustic guise. It's probably inevitable that the Nomads performances should contain plenty of bluesy inflections, given the presence of Brendan's magisterial harmonica, but these suit the songs exceeding well (check out Maybelle and How Come I Feel So Good especially). Another highlight is the sinister rap-cum-rant of One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, while the more pensive, romantic side of Alan's writing comes with Something Has Got To Change (and I liked the slight eastern touches in the guitar and harmonica work here too). This "spinoff" has much to commend it and a distinctive identity all its own.

David Kidman December 2007