Stubbs ~ Japan

The Prime Moving Lumps (1985)

Stubbs is a new discovery for me, though it appears to have been out in the blogosphere for some years. In any event, this is hardcore mid to late 70s Hatfield and the North / National Health worship. Which means it pushes all the right buttons for me. There's nothing here to indicate it to be a mid 80s recording. It was retro before retro was even imagined! Probably would have been tagged "dated" in its own day. If it even had its own day. More on that below. With The Prime Moving Lumps you get highly melodic and complex instrumental jazz infused progressive rock. Fuzzy keyboards, bass, and guitar lead the way. Music like this never gets tiresome. This is an album that needs to be discovered by the horde.

As far as its provenance goes, that's more of a mystery. RYM claims it to be on cassette, whereas ProgArchives had it once on CD, now they say it's an LP. Online you might find what looks like a CD, but almost assuredly it's a CD-R mockup. It's not in Discogs at all (as of 3/27/25), and Popsike says there's no history of a sale on ebay. My best guess here - and I've talked about this before - is that Stubbs were part of the tape trading culture of Japan in the 80s and early 90s. It was not uncommon for newly recorded material - live or studio - to be passed around via cassette. These were not official releases, but were meant to gain the artist exposure. For example, Happy Family was well known via this method long before their first official CD arrived on Cuneiform (and even before their one cassette). Perhaps it does exist in physical form already - but it sure is damn obscure then. Wouldn't be the first time, but for now, I think the theory above holds until proven different.

This is certainly an album worthy of a CD release - or reissue if it turns out that way. This hasn't occurred as of 3/27/25.

2/13/20 (review / new entry)