ICL 001 - A New Way of Seeing (Richard Harvey, 1980)

Discussions
1

aka “That Time in 1980 when a Staid British Mainframe Company Released an Album of Electro-Prog Rock For No Adequately Explained Reason”

Someone senior at ICL must’ve been a huge prog rock fan, or this wouldn’t have got past the initial meeting stage. For the launch of their ME29 minicomputer, they commissioned Richard Harvey (ex medieval proggies Gryphon, now better known for writing and performing on hundreds of film and television soundtracks) to produce an album for the grand launch presentation. Everyone who attended the launch got a copy of the soundtrack on vinyl. We got a copy from my dad, whose bureau was just the target market for the ME29.

The album is, to put it mildly, a delightful mess. As befits a major product launch, it’s got rapid changes of tempos and themes. What saves it, though, is Harvey’s musicality: even the inexplicable bits are extremely well played.

This album’s been part of my inner soundtrack for 40 years. I find myself humming bits of it now and again. I think you need to hear it in its entirety:

Richard Harvey: A New Way of Seeing

or by individual tracks:

  1. A New Way of Seeing
  2. Tangents
  3. Patterns and Horizons
  4. Reaching Out

I didn’t put the album up on YouTube, but I found it there a few years ago. Happy Listening!

Stewart

1 Like
"Why the UK's IBM failed" - an ICL history video
2

Thanks for posting - listened to it all. I’m in the right age group, prog rock was the thing when I was in middle- and high school. I enjoyed that.

3

There seems to be a digital release of A New Way of Seeing sometime in 2025. The label — Tin Toy — appears elusive, but it’s on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXm30o84P3I&list=OLAK5uy_leG_-TAR28FcVyoueN2lYPbeB7Zvl3mwo&index=2

It might even be a remaster: it sounds brighter than any version I remember.

2 Likes
4

Blast from the past. I saw Gryphon in 1975 at Stoke FC stadium when they (and Ace and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band) supported Yes. Loved their music. This, however, I found hard to love. Sounds a lot like so much synth music that accompanied TV shows in the 70s when they needed to show they were cool with technology.

1 Like