Neil McCormick reports: Gypsy Blood by Doll By Doll is the lost masterpiece of british rock, by the greatest band you’ve never heard of. First released in 1979, this lush classic of near-psychotic beauty has everything you could ever want from a rock album. A widescreen, windswept epic, featuring layered, micro-detailed arrangements, it sweeps from the tender to the terrifying, often within a few bars. The playing is elegantly syncopated, technically impeccable, darkly dramatic. The singing is pure mercury and silver, band leader Jackie Leven’s voice gliding effortlessly from baritone to falsetto, improbably lifted through the bloody guitars and hammering drums by Beach Boy harmonies and gospel choirs. And the songs: well, the songs are stunning, weirdly constructed, richly melodic and boldly lyrical, beautiful, poetic songs about seeking meaning amid the harshness of life. With the grandeur of Dark Side of the Moon, the strangeness of Forever Changes and the bleak beauty of The Bends, it really is as good as any album ever made. Utterly out of time amid the post-punk fires and new-wave angles of the late 1970s, it came out on a small label, Automatic, to good reviews and meager sales. Doll By Doll did not much help their own case with their belligerent, challenging attitude to audiences and critics. They could be a quite terrifying group, a swaggering bunch of hard-drinking, drug-taking, borderline psychotics in their late twenties who reveled in their otherness. They had a