Overegginnit — The Black Albumen (Buried Treasure, 2025)
Glyn “Bigga” Bush, the veteran of Rockers Hi Fi, Dandelion Set, Magic Drum Orchestra, and Lightning Head, celebrates Egg’s 1969 debut album, with side glances to The Polite Force and Civil Surface, on The Black Albumen.
He limited the palette to Egg’s original tools: organ, piano, tone generator/test oscillator, electric bass, and drums. Following Egg’s tradition, irregular meters dominate the recording, 5, 7, 9, 11, and the occasional 23, yet the writing favors momentum over math. Finnish singer, poet, and lyricist Hanna Ylitepsa enters as the project’s catalyst, weaving fierce wordplay and flashes of ancient Nordic dialect.
Drummer Matt Hartnell thrives in the flux, locking the pulse while surfacing the punch in Bush’s riffs. Producer-engineer, Mark Tucker, hosted sessions at his Devon hideaway and later mixed the album in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Although Egg is an example of early progressive rock, no side-long epics appear on The Black Albumen, and showy solos are rare. Instead, the album presents an eclectic mix of progressive rock, minimalism, currents of Krautrock and even tropicalia.
The highlights: “New Decade” sets the agenda with a heavy beat, interlocking keyboards, and Ylitepsa’s poised delivery; Canterbury lineage meeting Värttinä’s taut insistence. Meanwhile, the joyful “Prelude/Girl from the Baltic Sea” celebrates psychedelic tropicalia.
Equally good: “Heptadecagon” nods to proto-Canterbury with a nimble keyboard spotlight braced by elastic time signatures. “King Of The Plants” pares everything back to acoustic guitar and folk-tinged vocals, a pastoral breather. “Provokovieff” folds early prog, a dash of jazz, and a Brazilian breeze into one of the record’s most inviting turns, helped by Ylitepsa’s unforced charm.
As a statement of intent, the black Albumen persuades. Bush puts it plainly: “We’re not trying to recreate or replicate… we’re using unusual sounds and rhythms to provoke a visceral response.” The response arrives.
The CD arrives in a four-panel gatefold ecopak with eye-popping design by Nick Taylor. The album will be officially out September 4.
Buy The Black Albumen.