Mark Sisto might have been gilding the lily when he suggested that former Radio Birdman guitarist Deniz Tek was the inspiration for Val Kilmer’s character in Top Gun, but there’s no doubt Tek’s personal and professional narrative is worthy of Hollywood adaptation.
As chief songwriting protagonist in Radio Birdman, Tek’s garage pop canon propelled ‘Birdman to the heights of cult fame; later on, with his musical pursuits on hold, Tek put his considerable intellectual and physical capabilities toward extraneous pursuits: training as a fighter pilot, and practising as an emergency surgeon.
In the 1990s Tek returned to music, releasing a string of solo albums along with the odd collaborative effort. The Citadel Years collates a selection of Tek material from The Deniz Tek Group, Deep Reduction, Golden Breed and Dodge Main.
With 27 tracks spread across two discs, there’s plenty of variety in style and attitude. The Deep Reduction material stands out for its cogency and potency – the presence of Rob Younger on vocals and lyric-writing duties on Black Tulip, Always Out Of Reach andBig Accumulator is more than a coincidence in this regard, while songs such as Tubular Dreams and the funk-lite Salted Leeches convey Tek’s idiosyncratic pop sensibility.
Disc two is plagued with the occasional moment of inconsistency and a lack of intra-song cohesion. Billy Was A Cathar prevaricates between blues and harmony-laden surf pop, while Tek’s emphatic vocal effort on Shellback isn’t enough to counter the track’s intrinsic self-indulgence. Lunatics At The Edge Of The World has shades of The Visitors’ Haunted Road without the body, while the version of 100 Fools, released originally in the mid 1980s, and re-recorded in 1996 with former MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, lacks the pop direction of the original. There’s also a previously unreleased Birdman track from 2002 (Photo Album) that would’ve found a happy home on Zeno Beach, and a live version of Birdman’s Hand Of Law recorded during Tek’s 1998 Australian tour.
Sadly, the compilation excludes material released on Tek’s earlier (Red Eye) solo records, including Take It To The Vertical and Outside (not surprisingly, there’s also nothing from the 1980s French release Orphan Tracks), both of which arguably included tracks that overshadow the quality of a lot of Tek’s Citadel material.
There’s a wide gulf between Tek’s work with Radio Birdman and the material featured on The Citadel Years. Whether that’s a reflection on the former or the latter remains in the eye of the beholder.
Best Track: Always Out Of Reach
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: Take It To The Vertical DENIS TEK GROUP
KEVIN WRIGHT
