THE ELTON DEAN SESSIONS

4.5 stars. After three humour filled albums to start their careers this Canterbury/Frank Zappa loving band turned serious. Maybe it was the departure of Sacha Van Geest, the flautist who took the humour with him. Or maybe it was the addition of legendary sax player Charlie Mariano that caused the boys to behave. How huge was it that Mariano joined this band! Yes he was just on that one album called "Iskander" from 1974, and he may have left because of it's poor sales or more likely he just heeded the calls of Eberhard Weber in Germany who wanted his help. And help Charlie did on "Yellow Fields" and "Silent Feet".

But after Mariano left, the band enlisted the help of Elton Dean, who obliged and joined their ranks. More than a dozen years ago I mentioned when reviewing "Spiral Staircase" that I would have loved to have heard music from Elton Dean's stint with the band. So you can imagine when I saw this cd pop up on the Wayside music site, I just about fell over myself to order it. And that cover! My favourite of 2024. And taken by a young Anton Corbijn. And if you don't know who he is, google his name you will be surprised. He also took the band photos which are all in black and white. Just a great package overall. Again, with Anton here, this is SUPERSISTER drawing some very talented people into their circle.

What I didn't know was that Elton Dean played a lot of concerts with this band, and they found one of these rare recordings. The sound quality is very, very good by the way. We have original members Robert Jan Stips on keyboards, Ron Van Eck on bass, along with Herman Van Boeyen on drums. Herman was also on that Iskander" album. My biggest surprise was that the music is better than expected. It's not like their early stuff, in the sense that there is no humour here. And it's not as serious as "Iskander' in that jazz style. This is truly a SOFT MACHINE/ SUPERSISTER cross. It's just a little different, a different flavour if you will. So we get song titles like "Soft Sister" and "Super Machine" playing on this fact.

The distorted organ and keys at times are so good. A lot of organ and electric piano. Elton is almost perfect here. He's not dominating all of the time, like some of his free jazz stuff, in fact often when he solos, so does the keyboardist. The other cool thing with this live release is that like SOFT MACHINE this band put their heads down and played from start to finish with the tracks all blending into one another, although there is that second half of "Judy Goes On Holiday" where there are the band member introductions. Of the eleven tracks, worth under 42 minutes by the way, six are improvs. The liner notes mention that the concerts that this lineup performed in consisted mainly of dazzling improvisations on themes derived from songs from their well-known albums.

I just love how this album sounds. Makes me wish they had done a studio album with Elton in this style. But I have this! Archival from 1974 by the way. And while I prefer the improvs on here overall, you have to hear the over 13 1/2 minute "Babylon", almost double it's length when compared to the studio version on "Iskander". And the opener titled "Fenderfarfissima" is just that, electric piano and organ.

I may bump this up to 5 stars down the road. And it certainly is joining my best of Canterbury list, joining "Presents From Nancy" and "To The Highest Bidder" in the process. My favourite purchase of 2024.