- Far Distant Thing (4:34)
- Dismounting Tigers (4:36)
- Lincoln Green (3:50)
MP3 (1:10 min, 1.1 MB) - Show of Strength (4:54)
- Red Five (5:12)
MP3 (0:51 min, 802 KB) - Sky End Fall (5:23)
- Kingmaker (9:25)
MP3 (2:58 min, 2.7 MB)
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ABOUT 'THE INFANT HERCULES'
After the release of the From the River CD, we started to do a fair amount of gigging. The live set was mainly built upon a few new songs which we'd recently put together, along with some of the better stuff from River. At some stage, we decided to put out a demo featuring these newer songs, intended as a record of our live shows at the time. The demo, which became the Infant Hercules, is exactly that, in fact it sounds like a sound board recording of those gigs. There are very few overdubs, and the overall sound is more raw and less smooth than From the River.
The one exception to the rough and ready sound on the Infant Hercules, is the first track, Far Distant Thing. This track was recorded on 24 track facilities by Rob Aubrey for a radio sessiont. It was our first ever time in a proper studio and we were nervous as hell. Again, this song wore an It Bites influence, but the arrangement was much better than anything on From the River and we got a pretty good sound.
Two of the other tracks on Hercules, Dismounting Tigers and Show of Strength continue the up-tempo pop rock theme, although less successfully than on Far Distant Thing.
Lincoln Green was a piano ballad with an English theme, something we've returned to again and again. This track was resurrected later on and made it as far as the demo stage for the English Boy Wonders CD, before being abandoned. A new version will probably appear on the forthcoming English Electric release.
Sky End Fall was another ballad, a nostalgic look at a childhood love affair. This track has always bothered us. There was a really good piece in there somewhere, but somehow, the Hercules recording lacks dynamics and does it no favours. It is one of our biggest under-achievers.
The best two tracks were the most progressive sounding recordings on the demo. Red Five, named after Nigel Mansell's racing car, was a chunky and tricky instrumental with a lot of power behind it. It was a bit of a cellotape job in terms of composition, but it worked really well as a live piece Finally, Kingmaker was our very first epic composition. Again it had an English theme to the lyrics whilst musically it incorporated parts of a very early track, Twelve, and also, in the instrumental section, bits of an even earlier song written by Greg and Richard Williamson, the singer from EQUUS.
Kingmaker is also likely to appear in a new form for English Electric.
Gregory Spawton
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