Artist: Hard Meat
Title: The Space Between: The Recordings 1969-1970
Year Of Release: 2022
Country: UK
Label: Esoteric Recordings – ECLEC32817
Genre: Prog Rock, Psychedelic Rock
Quality: FLAC I Lossless
Total Time: 01:59:47

Tracklist:
Disc1:
Hard Meat - Released in 1970
1. Through A Window
2. Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
3. Space Between
4. Time Shows No Face
5. Run Shaker Life
6. Universal Joint
7. Most Likely You Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine

Disc2:
Through A Window - Released in 1970
1. On the Road
2. New Day
3. Freewheel
4. Smile As You Go Under
5. I Want You
6. From the Prison
7. A Song of Summer
8. Love
9. The Ballad Of Marmalade Emma and Teddy Grimes

Disc3:
The Unreleased album - Recorded in 1969
1. Rain
2. Most Likely You’ll Go Your Way, I’ll Go Mine
3. Liquid Boats
4. Walking Down Up Street
5. Erection
6. Strange Fruit
7. Run Shaker Life
8. Burning Up Years
9. Don’t Chase Your Tail

In the late 1960s with the first flowering of the progressive rock and heavy rock movements, bands of both disciplines – and many straddling the two – began sprouting like mushrooms, some flourishing for decades and others a mere fleeting presence in rock’s back pages. One of the latter examples were the excellent Hard Meat, a progressive rock trio who recorded an unissued album intended for release on Island Records in 1969 and released two albums in 1970 for Warner Brothers.

Featuring brothers Mick Dolan (guitars, vocals), Steve Dolan (bass, vocals) and Mick Carless (drums), Hard Meat came together in late 1968 and came to the attention of producer Sandy Roberton who in turn brought the band to Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records. The band issued a single ‘Rain’ (an excellent cover of The Beatles’ classic song) b/w ‘Burning Up Years’ on the label and subsequently recorded an album intended for release on Island. However, for various reasons, the band were dropped from Island’s roster and the excellent recordings failed to gain a release. In 1970 Hard Meat signed with the UK division of Warner Brothers and released their self-titled debut album soon after.

The album and the band’s live performances in the UK and the USA (where they opened for acts such as The Flying Burrito Brothers) attracted enough critical praise and attention for a follow up album, the excellent ‘Through A Window’ to be released by Warner at the end of 1970.
However, by the beginning of 1971 the band broke up leaving a legacy of two fine, but sadly commercially unsuccessful albums which would later surface on CD many years later as poor- quality bootlegs as the band’s music was gradually rediscovered.