I’ve never been into Dungeons & Dragons and I’m never going to be into Dungeons & Dragons, or any form of table-top gaming for that matter. Video games got me at a young age, and the idea of setting up a board and rolling dice while some dude tells me a story about wizards just never appealed to me in the least. I guess I just don’t get the appeal. I’ve tried several times too. I had friends in junior high, college and in my adult life who were way into D&D. Many of them tried to suck me in, all to no avail. But if they would’ve came at me with their 20-sided dice in one hand, and this rad 2LP set of instrumental electronic music in the other, they might have fared a little bit better.
First Quest (Complete Album Download)
I didn’t know what I was expecting when I first dropped the needle on this record after finding it in a record store on the outskirts of Tokyo last week, but it certainly wasn’t a surprisingly above-average collection of minimal, John Carpenter-inspired instrumental electronic music. Considering the inspiration material, I guess I imagined something a little more classically-minded. Perhaps I was expecting a full-on symphonic score or some sort of symphonic metal. Although I guess the latter would’ve been impossible, as this album came out in 1985 and symphonic metal didn’t really exist as a genre at that time.
Save for the final track, First Quest is entirely electronic, and while it features original music by a variety of musicians (of whom I’ll get to in a bit), the album has a fairly consistent creepy, vaguely dark, vibe that carries itself across all of the songs, regardless of composer. The previously mentioned Carpenter influence is strong with this one, echoes of Halloween are all over this record. But while the Carpenter comparison is the obvious one, when I listen to this I much more pick up the ambient stylings of Tangerine Dream, with a menacing hint reminiscent of Goblin’s work with Dario Argento.
With pedigree like that I’m probably overselling it a bit. No, this album isn’t a lost classic that’s ripe for recognition, but it’s certainly worth a listen, and way better than you’d probably expect a cheap collection of instrumental electronica inspired by a table-top board game to be. It’s catchy, fits the inspiration material damn near perfectly, and it’s a lot of fun. If some asshole in a jean jacket and retro-style shades put this out in 2016 ironically, it would probably be an indie-hit. Pitchfork would give it a 7.6.
A total of seven different artists are credited as composers on First Quest. Of them, the most prominent is probably Denis Haines, who was a member of Gary Numan’s backing band for the recording of Telekon. That group went onto form Dramatis, who released one album in the mid-80s before breaking up. He also played on albums by Fischer-Z, The Skids and, strangely enough, Marianne Faithfull. Haines’ work on the record runs the gamut, with some being rather upbeat, and others a tad more dreary and ambient. A standout of his selections is “Gnomes,” an poppy yet dark number that I could easily imagine Gary Numan singing over.
Click for hi-res.
Two other names that pop up a lot on First Quest are Phil Thornton and Dave Miller, who compose about half of the record. Together they were part of an early-80s synth-pop group called Expandis, who continue to release new music, and Thornton has a fairly prolific career as a solo musician putting out new age and ambient music (much of it sci-fi or fantasy themed). Based on their work here and from what I could find of Expandis online, Thornton and Miller probably dug the darker edge of early-80s synthpop and post-punk quite a bit. I bet they totally saw Echo & The Bunnymen live at least once. Their stuff here is good mood music that sets the tone for the album, but sometimes it falls a bit too far into new age territory for my tastes. “The Return Of Light” is a damn fine closer though.
Then there’s Steve Parsons, in addition to the handful of tracks he donated to this record, he also worked a bit as a film composer in the 80s, contributing songs to the superb Empire State soundtrack, and composing the horrifically bad score the the hideously awful Howling II. His tracks here aren’t that great, but I’ve read that the solo stuff he released under the name Snips is much better.
There’s also Barrie Guard, whose one contribution to First Quest, “The Heroes Ride Out” is an easy highlight. If his Discogs is any indication, Guard got a lot of work in the 70s and 80s, working for musicians as diverse as Bonnie Tyler, Dusty Springfield and Cliff Richard. He was also the orchestra conductor for the score to one of my boyfriend’s favorite films, A Room With A View, so the next time you want to connect Merchant And Ivory to D&D in just one step, there you go. Too bad he never stuck with the minimal electronic score thing, he was pretty good at it.
The only group credited on First Quest is a band called The Device, who only show up for one track. Their tune isn’t bad, and is definitely one of the more Carpenter-inspired joints on the album. They didn’t seem to do anything outside of the album though, and I can’t find much about them. Finally, there’s guitarist G.P. Hall, who concludes the album with an entirely out-of-place guitar track. He has a fairly expansive Wiki entry that he probably wrote and should probably be deleted.
The album also features some brief snippets of narration by Valentine Dyall, who geeks will probably recognize as The Black Guardian from Doctor Who. He also starred in a shitload of British movies throughout the 40s and into the 80s before he passed away in 1985, shortly before the release of this album, hence his credit as “The Late Valentine Dyall.”
The packaging for First Quest is rather elaborate, featuring a gatefold sleeve and two custom inner sleeves which feature printed instructions for a Dungeons & Dragons campaign that follows the (rather loose) story outlined in the album’s music. Not knowing much about D&D, I couldn’t tell you if the campaign is well thought-out or worthwhile in anyway, I’d love to hear insight from anyone who might know.
Not a great album, but definitely a fascinating one, and a wonderfully dated product of its time that I think is ripe for rediscovery by a more accepting audience. I hope you find it as fun as I do.
That’s pretty cool, never knew it existed.
Awesome share! Thanks!
While listening to this album (which I definitely enjoyed, thank you), I got quite the nice little surprise when the track “The Living Dead” came up, as it’s essentially a reworked cover of the main credits “Trioxin theme” from the 1985 film “The Return of the Living Dead”. Curiously, the Trioxin theme (yet to ever be officially released) was written and performed by Francis Haines, perhaps a relative or different name for Denis Haines? Also interestingly enough, Francis Haines would go on to work with Steve Parsons on the soundtrack for the 1992 film “Split Second”. Split Second in itself is worth looking into, if you haven’t seen/heard it before; the soundtrack uses motifs from The Moody Blues’ “Nights in White Satin” throughout, and it’s Rutger Hauer fighting a demon in a flooded London. Anyways, thanks again for the work you do, and hopefully this information might be of some interest to you.
OMG / thank you SO much for this. I’ve been after this for years since my harddrive on an old computer crashed and I didn’t have backups
This is pretty cool can you get some bigger pictures or even scans of interior art and the liner notes?