MADDEN AND HARRIS

A folk duo from Sydney, Madden and Harris had the particularity of being a teacher/pupil team, Peter Harris being a classically trained music teacher who was a multi-instrumentalist (from keyboards to winds, harp and guitars), while Dave Madden was a guitar student of the former. The duo started playing together as early as 1972, releasing a single in 1974 on Alberts ''Remember Me'' and its flipside, ''A Simple Song''. Both tracks were pure UK/Celtic-like folk drenched in mellotron. The duo appeared on ABC-TV's popular music series, GTK, in September 1974 and twice in November of that year.In 1975 they released their only album, 'Fools Paradise'. This album was released on their own private label, Jasmine Records, and only 500 copies were pressed. It was a superbly illustrated gatefold album with an extremely fascinating innerfold, drawn by Jane Lerossognol.

The album's sidelong suite is dedicated to this painting, and the arrangements are fully progressive some movements are drowned in mellotron drones. Harris once said of 'Fool's Paradise': "our music lies halfway between a 16th century chamber sound with light jazzy influenced breaks", but there is a pure 60/70's folk-rock vein to be found in their music as well. The album sank without a trace. Ian McFarlane described 'Fool's Paradise' as, "carefully crafted songcycle was full of fragile, refined songs in the vein of UK folk acts like Nick Drake and Mellow Candle, the softer side of The Moody Blues and the quieter, pastoral moments to be found on the early albums by King Crimson." AllMusic's Richie Unterberger rated the album as three-and-a-half stars, and noticed that it, "went in a slightly less pop-oriented direction and was a decent if somewhat derivative British folk-rock-styled album, colored by a fair bit of influence from both classical music and progressive rock."

The group disbanded in 1975 and Harris issued his solo album, 'Ruby', in that year. Music presenters, Jordie and David Kilby, reviewed the album, for their radio programme, Back 2 Vinyl, "Mixing some progressive folk sounds with synthesizers, Ruby is a record unlike anything else being made in Australia at the time''. Apparently, the album saw a reissue in the very early 90's, but we had to wait for the Korean label M2U to release this album in its full-blown splendour, a mini-LP with the non-album single tracks added as sweet bonuses in 2003. Another reissue from the Spanish label Akarma happened in 2005.

SINGLES 
''Remember Me / A Simple Song'' 1974 Alberts

ALBUMS 

'Fools Paradise' 1975 Jasmine Records

References

Madden and Harris - Wikipedia