XHOL CARAVAN / XHOL

There are many different things about this album that I love, but the one thing that always lingers in me long after I've spun it, is the overall impression of 'feel'. Now as daft as that may sound to some of you out there, I still stand by my statement. This album, with its wonderful title Hau-RUK, is perhaps the benchmark of what you can do musically, when all you have at the front wheel is feel.

Sure all music revolves around feel, and so it should, but with Xhol(remember this is after they ditched the Caravan part of their name) - and especially this album, there is little to hold it all together in form of chords, structure and what have you. This does however not mean that the music is unmelodious or mad - on the contrary; this is some of the most alluring and bobbing music out there.

Two long cuts, and if you've got a hold of the reissue one like I have, then you additionally get yet another 20+ minute track. Think Doors mixed up with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band seriously on acid - and then move this rather rambunctious setting into a more playful psychedelic jazz rock costume.that quite literally sounds as if the music was made in high seas on a river raft. So much bounce to this mother, you wouldn't believe it!

The drums are caveman raw, the organs sound like a bottom dwelling sea creature throwing up rhythmically and in tune, and still there is an imminent sense of chill about Hau-RUK - a characteristic about the whole thing that allures the listener out in deep hypnotising stints, where you feel like running through a maritime carnival in ultra slow motion.

In all fairness though, and just to play devils advocate, this record shouldn't work. It really shouldn't. This is basically jams with no preconceived idea of where to venture next. So you get this snaking thing that writhes and bobs - grows enormous and minuscule, frail and gentle - heck at times it even metamorphoses into something sensuous on accord of the sax - and yet I don't get anything meandering about it. Too many wicked rocking grooves and beautiful serene organ lead sections for that to be true.

I think all musicians know how it feels when everything falls into place - the times where you really cook and take off..........somewhere, and it feels like sex and drugs and everything in between. You catch each other in the music, and wield each other in, dance around, play and communicate through soundscapes, gestures and hidden sonic languages. Hau-RUK is exactly one of those times! Now whether that's down to high doses of mescaline, or just through the sheer power of music, I honestly don't know - and who really gives a flying feck anyhoo?

Xhol/Caravan(the first incarnation of the band), were actually one of the first Krautrock bands ever. They were part of the initial wave together with acts such as Amon Düül, CAN, Kraftwerk, Floh de Cologne, Tangerine Dream and Kluster, but I think it's fair to say that they were the first to merge the psychedelic Kosmische universe with jazz. Later on groups like Embryo, Exmagma and Kraan would go on to further evolusionise this branching of the Krautrock tree, but this was where it all started - with Xhol. This is however not your everyday jazz rock. It feels infinitely more sluggish and larval - like it moves forward on its tummy in huge sweaty gulps - mimicking the kind of early blues infatuated jazz rock feel you'd get from an album like Valentine Suite, although Colosseum and these Germans sound nothing alike. Yep makes no sense whatsoever, but that's how I roll...

The one thing that originally put me a little off with this album, was the sudden change of pace during the second cut, where you suddenly are met with a trashy and somewhat archaic take on the old BB King classic 'Rock me Baby'. This is a thing of the past, and ever since I started eating small children - I've really been digging it. Again - we're talking about feel. The live-in-your-face-untethered-imaginative and highly seductive musical experience that sometimes gets caught on tape, but far too often remain hidden brain polaroids in the back of long lost hippies... Well not this time. This is the real deal.

Catch this one for its thick gooey organ work - better yet get it because of its sensuous and at times wonderfully chirping saxophone spurts - or maybe for it's way of edging you into a murky dream state with everything around you exuding the type of melted reality you encounter in a Salvador Dali painting. 4.5 stars.

Already renowned as a pioneer of a psychedelic Krautrock project, but I've felt not only Krautrock but also more eclectic and versatile. Guess they had played under their "original" style without any intention but their soundscape should be incredible in those days (and sadly not popular for commercialism maybe). With cheap sound effects or cheap electronic boards, they could played enthusiastic jazzy / psychedelic / experimental lumps fully in this creation.

In the beginning of the first track "Electric Fun Fair" complex and powerful horn section sounds based upon hard-edged drumming kicks blow us completely, and following those, funky, freaky swinging jazz sounds make us comfortable. In the middle part an improvised / experimental session primitive as one of Krautrock jobs pushes us away into another bot. The second track "Pop Games" is deep bluesy jazz rock filled with heavy riffs based upon brilliant bass and drum kicks and a bit cheesy tape effects. This song can be thought not a typical Krautrock stuff but simultaneously can let us know what the German experimental pioneer should be. The track closest to golden road of Krautrock might be the third one "All Green" I suggest ... funky speed rock seasoned with some electronic weirdness, can surprise us definitely.

The Side B gets started with another bluesy scene called "Raise Up High" filled with funky jamming texture and experimental psychedelia spice. Very powerful, very eccentric fuzzy voices are not of comfort but courageous for us surely. Not typically Kraut-flavoured but interesting feeling in early German progressive rock world. The last track "Walla Mashalla" can be said as the most innovative ending throughout this album I imagine. Fascinating, addictive yodels and a big bang noise of a toilet door closed should give us a bit loneliness definitely ... the fantastic hour in a lavatory has finished, with something fresh and cool like the spring air. Excellent album-theatre indeed ... of fantastic Electrip.

While "Hau-Ruk" doesn't match the quality of the two named albums it is still a very imaginative album, with two long improvised tracks full of strong psychedelic organs, intuitive drumming, smooth bass work and saxophones from Tim Belbe and Hansi Fisher. The latter would turn up again on Embryo's "Rache" album. The first track is the most consistent; the second has a very psychedelic and impressive first half before it changes to a rather dull take on BB King's "Rock Me Baby".

A nice album if you like that meeting ground between kraut and jazz/rock, where free-form improvisation, jazz and psychedelicca blend together without effort. Also fans of the experimental side of the Canterbury scene might dig this.

I don't know why they bothered. They're as dissimilar as a loaf of bread and a carton of milk.

'Orgelsolo' - the opener is a really dull and uninspiring opening track with mind numbingly bad keyboards which veer off in no direction whatsoever making me very annoyed. Things pick up a bit with 'Side One First Day' where so called keyboardist, gives it his all. Unfortunately it's tuneless and random at best. 'Grille' goes on for ages with some crickets making the sound that crickets make before a bit of flute appears. Happily the flute and crickets get along famously, creating an atmosphere that belongs in Egypt and sounds quite nice really.

The 13 minute 'Love Potion 25' finally sees some vocals enter the foray. All of a sudden things burst into life with big fat organs all over the place. This is the best tune on the album making up for the previous rubbish I've had to endure. There's horns, jazz bass and nutty vocals all over the place lifting this album up to a 3 star rating rather than the 2 it was going to get.

Original LP includes 5 compositions, mostly psychedelic jazz-rock with soul and blues-rock roots. Combination of organ, sax, flute and free jazz jamming, combined with German folksy elements, humor and some soul vocals gives to that recording quite specific sound.

No great melodies or recognizable songs, but common atmosphere is freaky on a manner of 1969! Long jamming is more about psychedelia, not about technical abilities demonstration.

Two CD bonuses are a bit different from main album's material: Planet Earth has soul slightly bombastic vocals and guitar soloing. "So Down" is bluesy romantic ballade with psychedelic scent, again with some electric guitar soloing and organs passages. Both songs sound as borrowed from "Jesus Christ Superstar" album.

Interesting release, important for kraut rock fans and still attractive for early psychedelic jazz-rock lovers.

Band's roots are in blues-rock and r'n'b, so you quite often can hear there some characteristic chords and structures. Between their spacey organ passages they even use B.B. King's "rock Me Baby" as element, included between their jamming!

Even when using plenty of spacey sounds, whole music is quite minimalistic, with excellent accents on separated sax, electric keyboards and great drumming. As often with such music, the album could sound a bit unfocused, but I don't think there it's a big problem.

If you like early kraut-rock, melting psychedelic spacey sounds with excellent minimalistic free-jazz jamming to one long improv, you must listen this album!

On "Schaukel" it sounds like they started recording this song as it was already well under way. It settles quickly as sax comes in playing a relaxed melody with organ, drums and bass playing softly in the background. The sound gets louder before 3 minutes and builds. A calm after 5 minutes as the sax stops. It starts to get bluesy. Vocals come in after 11 minutes, they do get pretty vulgar and obscene in this straight up blues section.

Pretty good record, but for me not essential in the least. I'll stick with their "Electrip" studio album.

"Electric Fun Fair" opens with the sound of a toilet flushing followed by a circus-like melody before we get to the rest of the song. Sax and drums lead the way with some great organ runs 3 minutes in as drums pound. Sax is back 6 minutes in. "Pop Games" opens with chipmunk-like voices before drums, bass and sax take over. Great sound. It settles before 3 minutes as drums and other sounds come and go with no melody until 4 minutes in when a hypnotic beat is joined by some powerful organ 5 minutes in.

"All Green" is classic XHOL. I like this one a lot. It's like Free Jazz as drums, organ and sax stand out as they just jam. The bass also becomes prominant later. "Raise Up High" features vocals that are pretty raw but they work. Drums, flute, sax and organ stand out as he sings away. One line he sings is "We're gonna all get stoned, and then get blown." Where's the toilet flush ? Haha. It calms down 6 minutes in with sax sounds as it starts to build. Drums, organ and other sounds come and go until the main melody returns 9 minutes in and they jam. "Walla Masallah" is a short song with spoken words in German with a simple melody.

If I was rating the music by itself i'd probably give 3.5 stars, but this rating includes the fact it is somewhat original and very influential. This is an excellent addition to your collection, and a must have for Krautrock fans out there. And check out their live "Hau-Ruk" as well.

XHOL originally wanted to make a double LP as a studio and live split but the OHR label, headed by R. U. Kaiser, didn't agree and enforced a regular live production. So the members, a little bit angry about that, provided this album with the encrypted name 'Hau-RUK'. RUK stands for Kaiser's initials and 'Hau' is a german synonym corresponding to 'beat'.

'Haste einen Freund dann rauch mit ihm den Scheund' is printed on the album back side which can be figuratively translated to 'If you have a friend you should smoke a joint with him'. And that points to the essence of this spaced out recordings. Here we have simply structured jazz rock oriented jams in the absence of electric guitar but with diverse keyboard and brass contributions. If the listener does not lose his patience and is able to get used to the special meditative style of the band - only cut off by some explosive parts here and there - all obstacles are cleared further on.

Breit needs time to get involved with - a short name but a long meandering track and probably a description for the current condition of the band and the audience at this evening. The song rises slowly from minute to minute with canterbury leanings near to Soft Machine. The band members are interacting awfully good with a strange weird organ and wah-wah deformed saxophone. Schaukel - another german song name with a strange intellectual challenge - works nearly in the same way with more bluesy components including a reminiscence to the classic 'Rock me Baby' and it would be no problem to join the songs to one title.

Süden Twi Westen was recorded at the famous Dierks Studios on the other hand and looks like to be a result of a XHOL reunion which finally had not been completed. Norbert Dömling and Hansi Fischer, only contributing to this bonus track, are wellknown for me because they also played with Missus Beastly and Embryo. This song differs to the latter for some reasons - stylistically in the earlier XHOL CARAVAN mood, with a better sound quality and more elaborated and gripping. The band delivers a swinging jazzy begin with flute/saxophone and electric piano interrupted by experimental keyboard and flute contributions, later continuing in a more groovy mood and finally coming back to a very jazzy sound.

The original vinyl version of 'Hau-RUK' is a little bit unvaried according to my taste but the Garden Of Delights reissue, gentrified with the bonus track, is highly recommended though - interesting for fans who like to hear escalating jams with jazz rock orientation.

So I'm idly flicking through my reviews wondering if I've missed any letter of the alphabet, and X stands out - and, luckily for me, I've just acquired a copy of Electrip by Xohl Caravan, the better to increase my knowledge of early Kraut bands.

This isn't the usual stoke up a number, pass the funny pipe and see what drops out stuff - there's a definite method in the madness, and that, sadly, kills a lot of it for me - it's not what I expect from this type of music, and it reduces it to sounding like a bunch of musicians who should know and do much better.

To start with, we have Electric Fun Fair. This begins with a predictable waltz in the style one might associate with a carousel... actually, it appears to randomly start with someone flushing the toilet. I'm afraid I'm not really sold on the humour here, however... the musicians have got the textures right, but the lack of intricacies in the music tell it like it is - and the switch to a 5/4 jazz-rock style improv complete the picture, and it's not really one of a funfair - that's just lip service in the title. Oh, and the 5/4 swing in the jazz improv does make it sound like a variation of Brubeck's famous number, in case you were wondering.

Just when things are getting all too predictable, the music is broken down in a very interesting way - but this sadly gives way to perhaps the cheesiest thing I've ever heard from this musical scene. I know children are often told that the moon is made of cheese - but frankly, cosmic cheese is not for my crackers.

A more rocking groove takes over, and the organ goes off on a raga tip - and the whole descends into a noisy section that is much more like it, but soon returns to the jaunty fairground sound of earlier to bring the piece to a close.

You can tell that the band have thought about it and planned it out in some detail - and to my ears, that's entirely what's wrong with it. I like Kosmische music that really goes off on one, gets deep into the soul of the groove, follows it, tears it apart, layers it up and above all, FEELS where the music is going, rather than attempts to shove it into some pre-ordained and completely de-fleshed skeleton. Maybe that's just me.

Pop Games features a pleasant but slightly irritating ditty on the sax - which fortunately gives way to a pleasant improvisation over a single chord. I say fortunately... however, this drones on somewhat with little direction for a couple of minutes before some tension is built and we change to a pre-composed riff, which is striking in its potential for soundtrack music.

Then, around 2:55, it finally starts to get interesting - a drum solo, or rather, a percussion solo takes over, with small tuned instrument bursts giving a nice avant-garde feel, reminding me of Moonchild in places. This builds into another improvisation riff with a Doors go jazz flavour. The bass and drums get a kind of Ozric Tentacles thing going on, while vibes, sax and keys noodle around creating a spacey, Hawkwind-like texture - a couple of years before Hawkwind took this direction.

Next up is some jazzy funky goodness in All Green (reference to Al Green, perhaps?), which is of considerably better quality than the previous offerings, providing an interesting journey in a space that's mellow, with just enough tension at the edges to provide energy in the Doors-style keys.

A descending riff takes over, but is slightly overdone, then the music is slashed into with more aggressive keys, and a Pink Floyd moment strips the piece back momentarily. The drumming here is interesting, turning the beats upside-down and inside-out in turns, mushing it all up - but again, I feel it's all a bit too drawn out, before the descending riff returns and dissolves into chaos, which is where the piece should have ended - but, as a pattern forms, the band decide to resurrect the first theme and play with it a little bit - but not enough for it to be particularly interesting or warrant a re- showing here.

Raise Up High is a 17-minute+ spectacular... or would have been had we not been treated to some Jagger-alike vocals over music that sounds like the Doors meet a simlified version of Jethro Tull. These aggressive vocals really switch me off, and the music noodles around uninterestingly underneath them. Cries of Wooh!!! do not help proceedings, and the end of the piece suddenly seems a long way away... The improv here is not up to the quality of earlier tracks, and the bass is out of tune - hang on, there must be something nice to say about it.

Nope.

With lyrics like Baby, baby, I say I'm feeling better, I know it's not just because of the weather, we're on to a real loser, and only 4 minutes have passed of this monstrosity. Yawn.

Skipping through, I discover a breakdown at 6 minutes with some nice spacey bleeps and whistles from keys and sax that give the feeling of an ending. But no. It's so-called free jazz, where everybody plays what the heck they like with no regard to anyone else.

Suddenly, this is cut across with a reversed drum beat and more aimless noodling before a heavy riff threatens to build. This is sounding promising - but more like a new piece than a continuation of the old one. The bass is particularly irritating, noodling around, out of tune, with little regard for the build-up, and it all falls apart very disappointingly into more noodling that really gets on my nerves with its zonked-out lack of concentration.

We get approximately 9 minutes more of this - the bass player particularly noodling away around the same tired old lines, until we're treated to a harpsichord-alike solo for the final 45 seconds.

Hmm. One of the worst, most self-indulgent pieces I've ever heard in this genre - and that's saying something.

Walla Mashalla is vaguely interesting with its African chanting over more directionless noodle, but that's it - a very disappointing ending to an album with a poor start, but some real moments of inspiration somewhere around the middle.

As to the bonus tracks, Planet Earth sounds like the band were going for a hit single. A quirky one, with an odd vocal melody that leaps through uncomfortable (but effective) intervals, and a catchy backing, but single material nonetheless.

So Down was probably slated as the b-side of the single - a lightish jazzy/bluesy flavoured number, with vocals steeped in vibrato, and a nice swing.

In short, only worth owning if you need to have a complete collection of the earliest music in this scene - there's lots of Psychedelic rock from 1969 and the preceeding 2 years that has better improv, experimentation, virtuosity - and above all, soul.

There are some very good moments, but you have to go through a lot of dross to get to them. On balance, this album is only really for collectors and fans of Kosmiche music.