Songs For the New Industrial State

[[Release Detail]] [[Release Description]] “A stunning collection of new songs for and about the time we live in,” billed the text on the backside of composer Doug Randle’s 1971-released Songs For The New Industrial State. Doug Randle was a writer, arranger, musician, and conductor with roots deep in the Canadian jazz scene of the 1950s. After a lengthy spell working in England during the first half of the 1960s, he returned to Toronto and took up an in-house position at the government sanctioned Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Commercially released by the short-lived Kanata Records label, Songs was an introspective look at ever-dominant corporations, the cutthroat advertising world, our consumer society, decaying environment, and his own personal condition. The results crossed the epic studio creations of David Axelrod’s Capitol output (or Spanish folk-rock fuelled Pride LP) with Free Design vocal harmonies from notable vocalists Tommy Ambrose and Laurie Bower (Billy Van Sin