The Welcome Table

In a world where a succession of shitty, manufactured pop bands hog the number one spot, Liverpool collective Super Numeri don’t so much seem from another era as from another dimension altogether. It’s one where the experimentalism of the sixties never stopped, where Altamont didn’t happen and Syd Barrett didn’t go mad, where tantric yoga is a staple of boardroom meetings and where, instead of splitting, the Beatles moved back to Liverpool and turned the city into a gigantic Ashram.

In this alternate universe, Super Numeri, after the platinum success of their first album, Great Aviaries and the EP which followed it, The Coastal Bird Scene, decided it was time to really go all out for the pop mainstream, to have the kind of hits which John Peel would never get tired of playing as he presented the Chart Rundown on a Sunday afternoon. Hence the epic, hypnotic 24 minute opener to The Welcome Table, “The First League Of Angels”. Nothing could set the tone better for the sort of cosmic rock that the group specialize in, rhythm and blues stretched out till it becomes abstract, a place where the beats are live but locked and the harpist is old enough to draw his pension.