Saphron
Red Amber
★★★★
SHAGRAT/FEEDING TUBE. LP
Early-’70s school combo rescued from oblivion.
If Marine Girls had formed in 1971 at a west London school – Parsons Green’s Lady Margaret Grammar School – with heads full of Carole King, Dory Previn, Joni Mitchell and Cat Stevens, they may have turned out like Saphron, a female quartet which fell through the cracks. They also operated as The Folk Group and Red Amber. The nine tracks, including a ghostly version of King Crimson’s Moonchild, recovered from cassette and a BASF reel-to-reel tape, sound as if they have come from the other side – through the ether. This isn’t to do with the recording quality but an unforced otherness. Despite the influences, Saphron existed in their own world. Their big moment came and went when they appeared on a schools-only closed-circuit TV programme. Upon leaving school in 1975, they were done. Extraordinary.