Beyond Morgia was recorded at Armstrong Studios one weekend in June 1976, with the guys from Southern Electric on hand. With the studio’s tape operator Tony Cohen promoted to engineer and mixer, the session was recorded on the Saturday and then overdubbed and mixed on the Sunday. Loyde emerged with the mixed master tapes but for a whole raft of reasons (including his move to the UK ) the album never eventuated. In fact, Lobby burned the manuscript the day before he left for the UK “ In a fit of pique one night after I’d written this thing, I just threw the whole lot on the fire, ‘whompf!!’. I don’t know why. I’m a crazybastard sometimes; I just got fed up one day… The tapes went missing for many years, presumed lost forever but they recently surfaced.
The album itself is an incredibly eclectic and diverse assortment of music: vast swathes of glacial keyboard notes with Loyde’s unique, soaring psych-rock guitar work to the fore. It is classic Space Rock, beginning with a brooding Electronic pulse (think early Tangerine Dream circa Electronic Meditation and Alpha Centauri), before building to a climactic guitar crescendo that echoes Pink Floyd at their most spacious and futuristic (think Ummagumma and Meddle - with just a hint of Hawkwind’s wind-tunnelling space explorations from Space Ritual). On top of that are Loyde’s classical music influences, in particular his great love of Wagner and Beethoven, which come out in much of the music.
Finally seeing the light of day – 31 years after it was recorded – Beyond Morgia The Labyrinths Of Klimster is a worthy addition to the diverse catalogue of the great Lobby Loyde.