*2023 stock* Originally released in 1971-- a particularly ripe vintage for freewheeling progressive folk-rock-- British trio Jan Dukes De Grey's second album Mice and Rats in the Loft ranks alongside Comus' First Utterance as one of the wildest relics of the era. 

Comprised of three lengthy tracks, Mice and Rats in the Loft amply showcases the formidable talents of multi-instrumentalists Michael Bairstow and Derek Noy, joined here by drummer Dennis Conlan. Throughout these pieces, the musicians gallop exuberantly across genre borderlines, gobbling everything in their path as though afraid that some stray idea or blinker of inspiration might somehow escape their clutches before they can commit it to tape.

The album opens with the utterly staggering prog-folk epic "Sun Symphonica". Over the course of nearly 19 minutes, it careens chaotically from hyperactive folk strumming through meadows of muted jazzy woodwinds, lazing for a time in ornate chamber music splendor before again returning to THC-addled art-rock reminiscent of such groups as the Soft Machine or Gong. Overflowing with trilling, theatrical vocals and contributions by flute, violin, clarinet, and exotic percussion, this manic tour de force is so dense that after awhile it becomes difficult to name instruments that don't get used. Towards song's end they even cap the indulgence with a completely gratuitous harmonica solo, drawing the confounding piece to an appropriately arbitrary close.

The following "Call of the Wild" finds Jan Dukes in somewhat more conventional British folk regions, raising their strident voices in praise of the liberated life ("I will be free to sleep where I want and with who and what I will.") These vocals emote even more fervently on the closing title track, telling gruesome tales of ancient bloody rituals ("The screams of the victims still echo/ though it's centuries since they died") with gleeful relish as heavy droplets of Hendrixian wah-wah guitar gather in puddles at their feet. Some of the more flute-heavy passages veer uncomfortably close to Jethro Tull territory, but Mice and Rats in the Loft generally manages to avoid the prog-rock pitfalls of bloated self-satisfaction and pomposity, as the Jan Dukes instead infuse their music with enough psychedelic grit, sonic invention, and sheer unfaked strangeness to make this album a knotty puzzle worth many return visits.