1967’s supposed summer of love and its psychedelic, swirling colourful world was never going to last forever. 1968, by contrast, was darker and less flamboyant, a time of unrest. Students rioted in Paris, while the psychedelic pop of yesteryear was beginning to wane in favour of harder stuff. Often abreast of the mood of the pop-culture sphere, we only have to look at The Beatles output from this time to get a brief glimpse of the general changes in attitude. In a short time, they’d gone from lush, complex pop to a starker and altogether colder musical mood, a good chunk of the fourth side of their sprawling double set from 1968 devoted to near-impenetrable tape loops and cut-ups. Hendrix, too, had experimented with denser sounds on ‘Electric Ladyland’ than either of his previous two albums, while The Doors’ general circus of dystopia was at its peak. 1968 was arguably the year when pop begat hard rock. Fitting, then, with a whole arsenal of retro sounds at their disposal, that this trio from Cheshire should choose “1968” as their band name. Their sounds look backwards a time when the blues came with a mass of distortion and the world-changing Black Sabbath were lurking just over the horizon.

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