‘Herb Garden Quartet’ – our first album in 20 years!

Cover art for ‘Herb Garden Quartet’ – the remasters.

To celebrate the 60th birthday* of Herb Gordon – Herb Garden’s, agent, head groundsman, woodland guide, gnome, and all-round sage – the band release an album of previously buried treasure, now buffed gems to be enjoyed by all.

Herb Garden Quartet is released on 28 July 2014, exactly 24 years since lead singer Carl gave birth to Gordon at Ashton Court Festival, live onstage. HGQ features classics such as Red Van, Convicted Man, Sunburn, and live favourite Ice Cream Man and is the band’s first long-play offering since 1994’s 5 Pints ‘cassalbum’. Tracks such as Freak Out and Space Traffic Warden sees the album compile for the first time four, digitally remastered recording sessions reflecting some of the studio activities of the bumpkin-punks between 1987 and 1989. Prior to this formative period the band had recorded in kitchens, sheds and maternal dining rooms, often under strange monikers such as Cellophane Earwigs** – but rarely to great acclaim therefore.

In the late 1980s Herb Garden were sometimes known collectively as ‘Herb Garden Quartet’ which the band thought a tremendous quirk as, yes, there were five performers in the act. Remembering the time, bass player and founder-member Dave Crook said of the new release, “Fans understood Herb Garden for our odd, puckish and even gnome-like (†) ways. We weren’t easy to pin down and often had to make do with the media term ‘good-time thrash-metallers’. But on reflection I think there’s something here for everyone. Pretty much.”

The album came about when, in November 2013, the band decided to revisit their studio archives for a remastering project. Carl, Ben, Rat and Phil returned to The White House – a recording studio near the sands of Weston-Super-Mare. This was where Herb Garden made the bulk of their recordings, between 1989 and 1994, i.e. after the original recordings that are re-presented in HGQ, and during a time that took the band out of Bristol, into Europe (and, for a brief period, onto the books of Time Warner. But that’s another story).

‘Part One’ of the project resulted in the HGQ digital remasters, produced by the band and expertly engineered by Herb Garden’s regular recording engineer, Martin Nicholls. Buy Herb Garden Quartet here. Share our links and share the Lovage!

(*) There are 2.5 gnome years to the human one.
(**) The band’s very early recordings may surface in 2014 as extra tracks!
(†) It would not be until July 28, 1990 that the common or garden gnome would play a more significant part in the band’s life!