A cat-flap view of the curiously privileged world of Californian new musics, composed in and listened to largely by a generation that hung, in various guises, around Mills College, the Centre for Contemporary Music. Out of the Blue is a Sheff (aka ‘Blue’ Gene) set that shape shifts bubblegum pop (‘Next Time Might Be Your Time’) with quasi progressive rock and significant nods to Reich and the patterned music of his acolytes. The latter most notably on ‘Out of the Blue/A Letter from Home’ with its echoes of ‘Different Trains’ (but without the ominous and serious subtexts of that work.)

Trust in Rock is live from the University Art Museum, Berkeley, the venue being a clue to the provenance and audience of such music. Rock is at its most rambunctious on the unmodulating mayhem of ‘Machomusic’, apparently performed with the horn-players all in drag, but with, of course, the women in the band safely tucked up on vox, keyboards and Kathy Acker's lyrics. Post Terry Riley, post major Zappa, post prog in its pomp (even post punk really, Peter Gordon was already in his thirties and had left Iggy Pop three years previous), the concepts may be high, but the performances are of a swaggering inexactitude that perversely give it some punkish appeal. Some may feel Peter and Gordon rather than Peter Gordon are more memorable, but the bijou hostelry of modern musics has many rooms to visit. Check out Richard Powers' Orpheo for another view of this frenetically intriguing time.