So, if you go to the trouble of mastering your latest single at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, you better make it good and worthwhile, right?

Well, thankfully, the project led by the supremely talented Anna Black, responsible for said duties, more than satisfies, Platypus Planet bursting back into our consciousness with Wake Up, featuring Dave Bainbridge on guitars alongside Anna on keys and vocals; Robeone on keys, Alexis Bietti on bass, and Frank Nolte on drums.

I played this delight as part of the “new music” segment on my radio show last Saturday and it is embedded for you lovely website visitors below. As an appetiser for the forthcoming album, Echoes of the Soul, it serves its purpose extremely well, making you salivate for the main course to follow.

From the off, there is a rich progressive sensibility to this, the soundscapes soaring, and Anna’s distinctive voice exhorting us, I believe, to simply ignore the corporate and political voices which are tempting on the surface, but ultimately facile, anodyne, and we simply need to be ourselves, lose the blindness and stand up. My take, anyway, and the atmosphere builds nicely, the fusion of so many styles beguiling, but never losing that core rock touch, the guitar riffs emphasising this extremey well, haunting alongside the vocals, the bass pulsing, the keys insistent, the drums in the countdown to finale thumping.

Pop along to their website at https://platypus-planet.com/?i=1 and Bandcamp at https://platypusplanet.bandcamp.com/track/wake-up  

Come on. Let’s have the waiter bring our main meal!