OSMOSE

Starting out as early as 67 under the name of Ambition Of Music, AQ is one of those early 70's wonder in Krautrock, all the more legendary for having their two albums released on the famous Ohr label, even if both are fairly different from each other. On this debut album, AQ is a septet with most of the members being multi-instrumentalists, and their debut contained four unnamed tracks (two short and two long ones), the whole thing packaged in a many foldout artwork sleeve making this album rather expensive in its vinyl form. Not everything is perfect on this album, especially in the numerous fade-outs (some in-built in the tracks), but overall the album is a pure joy to have.

The music presented on this album is strange form of psychedelic jazz-rock (a bit like if Nucleus met the Saucerful-era Floyd), which reminds me a bit of Missus Beastly's early albums. The first two tracks are the short ones but not necessarily the easiest to cope with, far from it, really!! The first is a very-slow track that is unbelievable heavy which freaks out completely into heavy spacy-echoed sounds. Grandiose. The second track is a much faster three-minute affair, which stands a bit alone out of line with the rest of the album's style, but it is absolutely nothing shocking. This is the rockiest and least jazzy track on the album and the weakest. The first of the long tracks (rounding up side one) is an altogether different affair with its almost 11-mins and its Nucleus-styled brass section cross with an organ that you'd swear is played by a certain Mr Wright, while the wordless vocalizings is reminiscent of a raunchier Wyatt on Third. This is, along with the leadoff track, Osmose's apex.

The second side is taken up by the sidelong 18-min+ track, which bases its sound on the previous tracks but it has some lengths, especially in the percussion passage about two thirds of the way into the track and losses itself.

As their following album will follow two years later, under a fairly different line-up, being much more improvised free jazz, Osmose is from far AQ's best works and very much essential to early Krautrock history. All I have seen so far is a Spalax label reissue of this album (which I heard is OOP), but hopefully this will be reissued with the Kollodium bonus track on the Ohrenschmaus sampler album. Much worth the eavesdropping even if it is flawed.

Almost totally unnoticed in the prog rock history, this little underground but mesmerising cosmic/ jazz rock band shoudn't be ignored. their first album Osmose opens the dance with a dreamy / spacey piece built around dicreet guitar harmonies, then a nice and grave trumpet solo is added with weird cosmic sounds in the background. A pure krautrock hymn!!! The second track is a dynamic jazz rock composition with strange acid vocals at the end. Next we have a cool jazzy tune dominated by electric organ parts and a subtle improvised guitar solo. The fourth track begins with a peacful flute's line carry on a bright psychedelic improvisation mixing guitar patterns with flute / sax solo. The tune which closes the album is built around the piano, then comes jazzy guitar solo, apathetic trumpet parts and cosmic noises. Simple, honest, instrumental and well played this album is a must in Krautrock's first years.

ANNEXUS QUAM were one of the great German 70's underground experimental, psychedelic progressive rock acts. Musically and sonically ANNEXUS QUAM play an interpretation of cosmic prog rock with heavy allusions to fellow acts EMBRYO, COSMIC JOKERS, "Atom Hearted Mother" era PINK FLOYD and Klaus SCHULZE. No question this music is quite psychedelic with mesmerizing passages, space imaging and even sound effects. This album actually reminds me very much of the PINK FLOYD album "Atom Hearted Mother" with its sinister vocal choruses, psych song structures and guitar phasing. Without a question this album ranks for me as one of the true essential German 70's space prog rock albums.

Annexus Quam's legacy in the world of krautrock stood somewhere between the frontal jazz-rock fusion of Embryo and the ethnical-exotic excursions of early Agitation Free and Amon Düül II, generally leaning a bit closer to the former. Annexus Quam, as an ensemble, chooses to restrain the potential explosiveness of typical psychedelia while keeping an energetic vibe and an exploratory expressiveness to their music. Lots of inputs in the wind department (including a keyboardist who also plays clarinet), two guitarists with one of them doubling on trombone, almost every musician adding extra percussion together with the drummer - this disposition is more than ideal for the organization of extensive jams, and that's basically what AQ is all about. The guitar phrases and the solid rhythm section set up the coordinates in which the group's sound meets its functional ordainment. Their debut album "Osmose" is a feast for all lovers of trippy experimental prog. 'Osmose I' kicks off quite languidly, like a shade of light that illuminates the dawn's sky for sleepy eyes. 'Osmose II' shows a noticeable intensity increase, with a tribal-meets-funky pulsation augmented by a rocking vibe. The almost 10 minute long 'Osmose III' is the band's first expression of expansion and continuing feedback. Starting with an electric blues inspired basis in a slow tempo, very "Ummagumma", indeed. As the track goes on, the energy grows in a cleverly sustained manner, combining subtlety and intensity. The 18-minute 'Osmose IV', which filled the vinyl's B side, is the monster track. The Embryo similarities are easy to notice (although no rip-off or real imitation takes place). Juergen Jonusches' bass lines assume a leading role in many passages - in fact, it is the aleatory rhythm section's occurrences that set the mood for all the sections that go emerging as the track goes on. Some weird chanting married to tenor sax lines bring a playful lysergic mood. Between minutes 10 and 12 comes a drum solo accompanied by mesmeric pastoral flute lines and mysterious acoustic guitar phrases. After that, a series of sax, trumpet and trombone touches come by and by, creating an alternative to the duet of electric and acoustic guitar, while the drummer, once again, brings yet another solo without paying attention to what their partners are performing. This apparent sensation of chaos reveals, after a second or third listening, a clever exercise in the dadaistic textures of musique concrete and the unpredictable flows of free jazz. Full of improvisation and challenging moods, while not being excessive nor creepy, Annexus Quam's "Osmose" proves a solid hidden gem in the history of the most avant-garde side of prog.

(Review dedicated to my krautrock brother Philippe Blache).

'Annexus Quam', a German band released in 1970 their first record 'Osmose', a mixture of Psychedelic Rock, Blues and Jazz improvisation, similar to early 'Pink Floyd' and 'Grateful Dead' with a jazzier side like 'Embryo'. 'Osmose' presents four improvisational exerpts, the shortest being only 3 minutes the longest clocking in about 18.The overall athmosphere is laid back and spacy (mainly due to the slow rhythms and heavy use of Echo) giving the whole record a psychedelic feeling ( early Pink floyd) with a Jazz touch (large use of woowdwinds and brass).

'Osmose I', the first track establishes a psychedelic athmosphere with a short intro for guitar and & sax and evolving into a slow organ blues, a dreamy trombone solo and some space guitar.

'Osmose II' the shortest track, developes a bouncing uptempo rhythm between the bass an drums over which Uwe Bick places his spacy vocalizes reminding Roger Waters ( the whole track reminds Floyd's 'Careful With That Axe Eugene').

'Osmose III' the last and longer part on side one, presents a heavy slow blues, with great guitar work -a repeated arpeggio motive-, followed by a jazzy trombone solo, a jazzy guitar solo and organ washes. About half of the track the rhythm changes and developes a more psychdelic athmosphere with a spacy flute solo.

'Osmose IV', the longest and stylistically most interesting track, mixing Jazz, Psychedelic and Spanish music, starts with an acoustic piano intro, evolving into a jazz groove with drums and bass , followed by jazz guitar, a trombone solo and again some spacy vocalizes. After 5 minutes the rhythm slows down giving space to a heavy echo-slide- guitar section over cymbal strokes ( quite similar to 'Set the Controls' ). A bass line establishes a rhythm change, followed by another slide-echo-guitar section leaving place to a percussion-only passage, that evolvess into a spanish flavored rubato section for acoustic classical guitar and trumpet with reminiscences to the 'Concertio De Aranjuez' followed by a jazz groove and ending with a psychedelic organ and drumlroll section.

A highly interesting record that combines jazz improvisation with Psychedelic, Blues and World elements.

This is pretty much an all instrumental album with some vocal melodies here and there.The seven member band play a variety of instruments including flute, sax, clarinet, trombone, bass, organ and guitar with most of them playing percussion. The sound is mostly relaxed with some psychedelic passages making an appearance once and a while. I guess you could say this is music to veg out to.

"Osmose I" is a slow moving track that opens with reserved horns and flute for a minute.Then guitar, organ and percussion enter this psychedelic soundscape. Various spacey sounds follow with more relaxed horn melodies. "Osmose II" is more uptempo with percussion and vocal melodies leading the way. "Osmose III" is over 10 minutes long and closes out the first side of the album. Dual horns, percussion and guitar a minute in as the organ arrives. Vocal melodies after 3 minutes in this relaxing and dreamy tune. This sounds so good. Guitar and flute dominate 5 minutes in with that relaxed beat.

The final track "Osmose IV" is a side long suite at over 18 minutes in length. It opens with piano as a catchy melody of percussion, horns and guitar follow. 6 1/2 minutes in the song calms down as we are left with mostly percussion. Flute joins in 11 minutes in as it helps create a nice sound. 16 minutes in the melody stops as we get different sounds coming and going the rest of the way.

Another excellent Krautrock album for you fans to check out.

Osmose is a prime example of the psych jazz-rock direction in the early Kraut scene. In this area everything has to answer to Miles Davis, but with this strong collection of songs, Annexus Quam's debut deserves to be up there with the best.

The first track is short but heavy, sounding like Pink Floyd doing a slowly grinding funeral march. The drum parts remind of Nick Mason's early style, slow but entrancing, with hallow pounding toms. The second piece is more upbeat, with dazed organs and stoned wordless vocals accompanying the snake-charming pulse.

The longer pieces present a mix of early Floyd (Careful With That Axe) with jazz-rock similar to Nucleus' and Soft Machine's early albums. The music flows freely in unexpected directions and might probably sound too disjointed or too experimental for most listeners. I adore it though; it evokes a dream world full of weird and mesmerizing scenes.

This album remained largely unnoticed, unknown and buried under the weight of 40 years of rock history, but it has been an outstanding discovery. Not an essential title but an excellent companion next to your Nucleus, Soft Machine and Dzyan albums.

You really get the urge to give these guys a slap around the face to waken them up. It sounds like they're playing their instruments while half asleep lying in bed.

I was misled by the superb front cover. It's a bit of a misnomer. I expected something a bit stranger and more original, Basically you get the usual early Kraut sound from the early 70's. There's a few flutes are thrown in once in a while which livens things up, but it's really an album that has no idea as to where it's heading... It has all the trappings of early Kraut but sorely misses a vocalist amongst the excessive jamming that is clearly going on.

Luckily for Osmose, the last track (all 18 minutes of it!) is something of a dramatic improvement even if some of the drumming seems poorly out of time. They've finally arisen from their beds and have started playing with a bit of conviction, but it's all too late... I'm fed up with this.

I'm probably being a bit hard on this album, but there's so much better and original music available from this period of Krautrock, that I feel justified in the rating I apply.

Annexus Quam is one of those Krautrock groups I've been aware of for years, mainly doing research on the Ohr label. Osmose certainly came with one of the most interesting gimmick covers I have ever seen. The album consists of basically extended, jazzy jams with some minor spaciness. The band never bothered to give any of the cuts titles (like Cluster on their debut album from 1971, as Cluster that is, not Kluster), so it's basically divided into four parts, the fourth part taking up all of side two. I really don't know who to compare this with, just as I mentioned before, Krautrock with a jazzy bent. Different from the ethno-fusion Krautrock of Dzyan or Embryo. I'm guessing free jazz, avant jazz, and Pink Floyd are some references here. The last part features an interesting drum/percussion solo, doing some really creative moves with them. This is certainly one of the rarer titles on the Ohr label (nothing on the label is as rare as the "Ultima Thule" single from Tangerine Dream, though, but Osmose is still quite hard to come by). Reviewing this type of stuff is always difficult for me, as the emphasis here is on jamming rather than regulary songs and melodies, but I really enjoy what I hear here, and if you don't mind your Krautrock on the jazzy side, this is well worth investigating.

While psychedelic space rock may have found its origins in the mid-60s British scene most notably by Pink Floyd as well as others at the famous UFO Club in London, there is no denying that it was the German Krautrock scene that really nurtured it and took it all to the farthest trips of the day with a huge underground scene diversifying into myriad musical arenas. One of the most interesting of the lot was the Düsseldorf (nearby Kamp-Lintfort actually) based ANNEXUS QUAM who released two albums in the early 70s straddling the line between psychedelic rock and free jazz. Their roots stem as far back as 1967 as a hippy band named Ambition In Music but in the process of constant gigging and touring the members were growing bored with the predictability of the pop music scene and became more adventurous and eventually acquired seven members that added guitar, bass, drums, clarinet, flute, sax and trombone to the sound.

The band was signed to the underground Ohr label and made their first appearance on the 1970 compilation "Ohrenschmaus - Neue Pop-Musik aus Deutschland" which featured the track "Kollodium" that never made it onto the first album but debuted their interesting mix of cosmic Third Ear Band freedom with trippy folk flute, jazzy bursts of saxophone and trombone blended in a psychedelic fuzzy haze. Their debut OSMOSE (osmosis) featured four tracks with the first two shorter in length and more oriented in a drum heavy psychedelic rock with jazzy touches and the two final ones that exceed ten minutes in length and venture out into the great unknown with some of the most cosmic Krautrock of 1970. They played on the Expo 70 tour in Osaka, Japan and have the honor of being the very first German rock band to perform in that country.

OSMOSE is one of those instantly recognizable albums for its colorfully lysergic album cover that finds various scenes melting into the next and displays the perfect visual for the accompanying sound effects within. This is a free flowing sort of music with no regard to conventional song structures and instead relies on a steady Indo-raga sort of percussive drive that varies from rock drumming on the first track to the heavily jazzed up second track but as the album continues becomes more hypnotic as it merely coasts along as the other instruments flutter by in seemingly random streams of consciousness. The psychedelia is turned up as far as possible with occasional fuzzed out guitar, psychedelic keyboards and twangy echoed effects that include ring modulation. While at times it takes on an Ash Ra Temple vibe it equally straddles the jazzy Kraut sector of Embryo or Lard Free albeit well before those bands got their feet wet.

ANNEXUS QUAM were hot in the heels of the earliest Krautrock experiences such as Amon Duul II, Can or Xhol Caravan but instantly conjured up a unique spaced out style that is an instrumental journey into the cosmos and beyond with only drugged out nonsensical moans providing the only vocals on board. This is really an extended jam session based in a predominantly acoustic environment in an Indo-raga meets free form jazz and rock experience. The album is quite chilled out and plods along at a slow speed as it takes elements from many musical arenas and rides a sonic wave to infinity. Not as structured as their contemporaries in the songwriting department but quite successful in taking the psychedelia to the maximum levels. OSMOSE is one of the earliest examples of the kosmische Krautrock scene that has a timeless feel as the zeitgeist of the early movement transcended the place and time where it emerged. One of my favorites of the trippy side of the Kraut scene but i'm equally fond of the second and final album "Beziehungen."