VITA NOVA

VITA NOVA were an obscure band from Austria who put out only one album.Their name means "New life" in Latin. They also sing in Latin on this album. I actually became interested in this band from the excellent guitar playing of Eddy Marron on DZYAN's two albums "Time Machine" and "Electric Silence". I found out Eddy started out with this band before joining DZYAN. Funny but Eddy goes by Ed Ugly-Ugly on this album. Tee hee ! Of the 12 original album tracks half of them are under 2 minutes !

"Quomodo Manet" reminds me a lot of the Swedish band DUNGEN. There's a sixties vibe to this song. It's uptempo and vocal / drum led until some fuzz organ takes over. An atmospheric calm 4 minutes in to end it. Good start. "Vita Nova Inventions" opens with piano and guitar with drums and organ a minute in. The bass is prominant 2 1/2 minutes in. This is a great instrumental,perhaps the best song on here. "Whirl Wind" opens with the Hohner clavinet with drums followed by a gong. A mellow soundscape follows with more clavinet to end it. "Istanbul" features the Turkish zaz with drums and is obviously eastern sounding.

"Sylvester" is dominanted by incredible piano melodies. "Wildman" is mainly a drum solo as the song title implies. "Inventions Finale" is a short instrumental with the organ and drums standing out. Excellent. "Heya-Cleya" features percussion and vocal melodies for 2 minutes then it changes as we get some good organ runs. Vocals follow. "Adoramus" opens with these heavy drums that seem to bang around aimlesly for almost 2 minutes then it becomes pastoral with organ, light drums and bass. Fuzz organ before 5 minutes as vocals come in that are blues flavoured. "Sunt Alteri" opens with organ as light drums and bass join in. "Adoramus Finale" opens with experimental sounds. Organ and spoken words come in. Haunting ending. "Tempus Est" again reminds me of DUNGEN and the opening track with that sixties feel. The final two songs are bonus tracks that were recorded by the band in the summer of 1971 but never before released. I actually like these two songs the best. "Lacrimosa(Death of a world)" features lots of great organ throughout, while "Olymp 99" has really the first evidence of how good Eddy is at playing guitar 1 1/2 minutes in. It is led by organ up until that point.

Originally this was released by "Life Records" but only 500 copies were made so this became a valuable collectors item. One of my favourite labels "Garden of Delights" re-released it in 1995 on cd. This album is a real trip.