GIRLRLS !

Unchanged line-up and an even uglier/tackier artwork than on the debut album, Eiliff's second album is a tad more on the prog rock side than its predecessor, recorded the year before. One of the few things that did change is that keyboard player Brüninghaus is not only playing organ, but ha also plays electric piano and saxman Kalveran has not only a tenor sax, but an alto sax as well. It might seem relatively minute changes, but they will make a difference in this album, in terms of interplay and composition.

Opening on the 6-mins Eve Of Eternity, Eiliff seems to have listened to some more Focus, (although both groups were more or less contemporary) and you'd swear they'd be copying Finch has that group not yet been recording. King Of The Frogs is another example that Eiliff should never be caught singing. Not only are the vocals catastrophically bad, but while they're on, the rest of the track's production simply sucks as well. After two verses, the singing stops for a narration backed by a free-jazz improv, before picking up again. The album's best track Journey To The Ego closes the first side in a brilliant hard drivin' jazz-rock manner and one of the album's best moment.

The title track opens the flipside and is easily the albums' most Canterburyan track, eyeing at Soft Machine and Nucleus, easily the album's apex, especially once into its slower torrid middle section and its slow build up to the original riff. The 9-mins Hallimasch is unfortunately plagued with those awful vocals (and again the recording production of the rest of the group being botched), but once over with them (as if a chore), the track opens up into a red-hot groove with Najedepour (guitar), Kalveran (sax) and Brüninghaus (el piano) exchanging excellent lines and solos that Secret Oyster wouldn't disown.

While this second album is marginally better than the debut, it is most likely that Eiliff, like many other kraut-jazz-rock groups, were probably most at ease in concert and surely with their bassist not singing. While neither album are essential, prefer this album to their debut and maybe check G O D's Encounter of The Third Kind, the Bremen broadcast being much too short.

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