"FOREVER AMBER - THE LOVE CYCLE" (WONDERFUL BRITISH PSYCHEDELIA 1969)

"FOREVER AMBER" are originally an act called "The Country Cousins", gigging at Cambridge Shire air bases for homesick Americans.
By 1967 they were driving to gigs in a "Psychedelically" painted ambulance – the new moniker was an abbreviation of "Forever Ambulance".
Meanwhile, the 18-year-old accountancy student "John Hudson" was spending his lunchtimes writing songs for the group's sole album in a rehearsal room above a shop in Cambridge.
"John Hudson" had ambition.
"FOREVER AMBER"'s eponymous album, "The Love Cycle" (Advance M ADV 00101), like "Beach Boys"' "Pet Sounds", cover a relationship sequentially from first meeting to grim denouement.


He found a studio to fit his £ 200 budget below a musical instrument shop in Hitchin. "FOREVER AMBER"'s "The Love Cycle" was recorded in a marathon 19-hour session on a Sunday in September 1968, and the band made great use of the profusion of riches upstairs; glockenspiel, penny whistle, a wah-wah pedal, and plenty of harpsichord.
This 1969 LP is a honeyed, melodic album, as intimate and irresistible as anything "The Left Banke" or "The Zombies" ever made, laced with perfectly-timed, dramatic Fuzz-guitar violence.

Created by six teenagers in Northern England, this sixteen song concept album follows the rise and fall of a summertime relationship.
From the celebratory, deeply harmonized opener, "Me Oh My" which first notices the "new girl on our street" to the pensive, haunted closing track, "My Friend", which pleads and quivers with sorrow.

The eight chapters retell the entire romance through a compelling combination of jangling guitars, graceful organ, and the singular earnestness of heartachey teenagers.

Only 99 copies were pressed and flogged off at gigs to the lucky few.

There's a tangible aura about "lost albums", something that draws you into their parallel universe.