The Galileo 7

The Galileo 7 fuse freakbeat flair with mod muscle and layers of swirling psychedelia, channeling everything through brisk garage-rock drive, all built around songs by Alan Crockford, the ex-Prisoners bassist. Throughout the 2010s the group issued material on assorted labels at a brisk clip, eventually landing at Damaged Goods for the 2017 album Tear Your Minds Wide Open and its 2019 follow-up There Is Only Now. Personal setbacks and pandemic restrictions slowed their momentum, yet the February 2024 release You Me and Reality on the same imprint proved their paisley-patterned vision remained undeterred.

After years spent as bassist in the seminal Medway psych-mod outfit the Prisoners and later in the hard-mod unit the Solarflares, Crockford first tried songwriting during his stint in the punk-pop band the Stabilisers. Those compositions sat unused until he departed the group in 2009 and decided, for the first time, to front his own project. Taking up guitar, he recruited keyboardist Viv Bonsels, bassist Paul Moss and drummer Russ Baxter. Basic tracks were cut after hours in a friend’s print shop, with overdubs added in the basement shared by Crockford and Bonsels.

Their debut outing, the self-released EP Test Flight, appeared on the band’s own Fools Paradise label. The 2010 full-length Are We Having Fun Yet? followed on Italy’s Teen Sound imprint, revealing vocal harmonies and pleasantly trippy textures that diverged from Crockford’s earlier beefier groups and instead echoed the paisley-underground acts of the 1980s. Retaining the same recording approach but aiming for a slightly rawer tone, the band welcomed new bassist Mole—also a member of the kindred outfit the Embrooks—who issued the resulting album Staring at the Sound on his State Records label in 2013. The same lineup reconvened for False Memory Lane, released in 2014 on Fools Paradise, now incorporating Mellotron and a modest prog inflection.

Two singles, 2015’s “One Lie at a Time” and 2016’s “Cruel Bird,” preceded the live album Live-O-Graphic, captured in a single hour-long session after Mole moved to drums and Paul Moss reclaimed the bass chair. This configuration signed with Damaged Goods and, still working in their established fashion, delivered Tear Your Minds Wide Open in 2017 and There Is Only Now in 2019, securing their standing among the decade’s leading freakbeat-mod-psych revival acts.

After issuing the 2020 covers collection Decayed on Fools Paradise, the band faced COVID-19 lockdowns that halted rehearsals and gigs across England. They devised a remote-recording method and revisited material from Staring at the Sound, resulting in the six-song EP Listening to the Colours, which Spinout Nuggets released in late 2021. Once restrictions lifted, the musicians resumed live performances and completed the album that had been interrupted, yielding You Me and Reality on Damaged Goods in February 2024.