Kensington Market

While Avenue Road neatly summarised the musical trends of the late ’60s, Aardvark (released in 1969) anticipated the trends of the early ’70s. Kensington Market took a Moog (a crude $18,000 model, at that) to Beatles-style piano pop, producing a hybrid of the White Album and the Canterbury sound. Despite its weirder orientation, Aardvark is just as civilised as its predecessor. Short, dissonant interludes meld into mellow rock songs just odd enough to be interesting but not so odd as to be anything less than pop. It’s remarkable that the band’s music remained so decorous and melodic, given the drug problems that would break them up after the album’s release. Whether or not you like Aardvark’s subtle approach to experimentation, the album deserves full credit for interpreting the emerging prog sound in its own way. Kensington Market skilfully integrated new ideas into the sound they had already established, and the result was an album that seemed a natural, ambitious and, sadly, stunted progression from their excellent debut.