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Progressive Rock CD Reviews

Various Artists

Live Kraut - Live Rockexplosions From The Heyday Of Krautrock

Review by Gary Hill

These live recordings are all quite good. For fans of Krautrock many of these names will be pretty well known and others might not be. The thing is, I like how it feels like one concert rather than a group of pasted together performances. All in all, this is a great way to find out what Krautrock is all about. It’s also a good way to learn abut some new bands. This is a classy set and quite cool. Some songs are instrumental. Some have vocals in English. Some have vocals in German. All are potent.

This review is available in book format (hardcover and paperback) in Music Street Journal: 2013  Volume 3 at lulu.com/strangesound.

Track by Track Review
Grobschnitt – ACYM

This is a killer live rocker. It has a lot of energy and the various vocals in place are a nice touch. There are a number of shifts and changes in the arrangement and song structure. It’s a great tune that’s lots of fun.

Guru Guru – Transylvania Express
A little harder rocking, this is riff driven and very cool.
Mythos – Dedicated to Wember v Braun –

This echoey instrumental is space rock that’s very cool.

Embryo - The Bad Times Are Gone

Psychedelic rock meets progressive in this smoking hot jam. Some parts of this remind me a bit of Nektar.

Gila – Braintwist
There is definitely some fusion on display here. This is a cool tune that rocks quite nicely. It also has plenty of psychedelic intensity. There is also some jam band like inspiration.
Out of Focus – Where is Your Home Town
A bit fuzzy in tone, this rocker is very high energy and also quite cool. There is some killer guitar soloing on this and the organ sound is nice, too. At times I’m reminded a bit of Iron Butterfly. At other times I think about The Animals (mostly on the vocals).
Karthago – Rock ‘n Roll Testament

There’s some smoking hot saxophone playing on this killer jam. It’s got a real retro rock vibe with plenty of jazz in the mix. There are some sections here that make me think of Hawkwind. Other parts of it call to mind early Pink Floyd.

Nine Days Wonder – Long Distance Run

Percussion opens things up here. From there we get into a killer riff driven jam that has some definite hints of The Allman Brothers in it. There is some great guitar soloing in an instrumental break later in the tune.

Jane - Out in the Rain

There’s a cool psychedelic meets jam band kind of sound to this rocker. A good hunk of this is rhythm section with the vocals and no other accompaniment.

Ougenweide – Pferdesegen

This starts out mellow and melodic and builds up from there as it continues. It’s very psychedelic in nature. It gets quite lush in terms of the arrangement later. There’s a killer prog jam further down that musical road.

Virus – King Heroin

Imagine War and Santana mixing with The Animals (well, again the vocals really remind me of Eric Burdon) and some jazzy spacey rock. You’ll have a good idea of what this sounds like. There is definitely some killer instrumental work on this number. There’s a noisy bit of near chaos at the end.

Eulenspygel – Teufelskreis

There’s almost a groove to this mellower cut. The bass guitar line really works incredibly well. As it works out after the vocal section it calls to mind sort of a psychedelic jazzy jam with hints of Hawkwind like space rock. There is some great melodic guitar work.        

Anyone’s Daughter – Der Doppelstem
The closing piece is solid melodic prog number with some space rock in the mix.

 

 

 
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