POWER ON!

The sophomore release from this German band showing tremendous growth, moving the band's music fully into the realm of Jazz-Rock Fusion.

1. "Festival Rock / Use the Bridge" (17:30) right from the beginning of this piece one can sense the DRAMATIC change in musical approach the band has grown into: using an approach that is much more in tune with the fusion trends going on at the time in contemporary Jazz-Rock Fusion. The sound engineering is still strikingly pristine, almost ECM/ahead of its time, while the constructs are much more similar to those of Herbie Hancock's Mwandishi-era albums or even Miles Davis: more spacious, more drawn out, not so hurried to get the music into a compact form and package. The addition of electric piano to Klaus Gobel's keyboard repertoire is especially telling, considering that he was very much organ-centric on their previous album, 0611 Cat Quarter (released in the previous year). What a difference a year can make! Though the core quartet has remained the same, there are new collaborators on this album than on Cat Quarter in the form of busy percussionist Viktor F. Belgrove and two conductor/arrangers. I love the mix of the instruments so much as everybody seems up front and close--as if the listener is sitting in the middle of a circle of the players. Would that all albums could feel this intimate! At the beginning of the second minute the band falls into an awesome funky groove that drives somewhere in the third or fourth gear so tthat the individual soloing can begin. Fender Rhodes is first before a quiet slowdown bridge returns the band to the opening motif before they turn down a completely different alley for some Santana-like latin funk over which Gustl Mayr solos enthusiastically with his tenor sax. Speaking of enthusiasm, it definitely shows in every single musician's performances: these guys are fully, 100% engaged. In the second half of the ninth minute the melodists back off so that Viktor Belgrove and Kurt Bong can have some solo time. Then, at the end of the tenth minute, the band comes back with Klaus Gobel back to his organ while the rest of the band puts together a kind of another new motif--this one swinging a little more and which sees Klaus' organ playing a big role despite nice contributions from everyone else. In Gustl Mayr's solo in this portion of the suite we hear him going off with more fire and brimstone than we're used to hearing from him. (He's usually quite melodic and restrained.) Once again Gustl's organ playing style during his turn in the spotlight reminds me more of that of Rod Argent than anyone else--though he is quite fond of "returning to order" with the long sustained chords familiar to everybody from Steve Winwood's play on "I'm a Man." Nice suite. I really would have loved to hear more of that second, more-funky motif. (32/35)

2. "Catalyst" (9:18) opens with a more familiar 1960s organ-based jazz-rock approach that might have come from Stevie Winwood's SPENCER DAVIS GROUP or one of BRIAN AUGER's projects. Drummer Kurt Bong gets quite a little solo time in the second minute before the rest of the band is allowed to rejoin, this time with Gustl soloing on his tenor in a more 1950s bop style of jazz. In th e fifth minute everybody cuts out for about a minute of odd but interesting African tribal chant and drum music, but then, just as suddenly, everybody returns to full-band jazz, picking up the bop motif as if nothing had interrupted them, only this time the create a new pattern by slowing way down every 20 or 30 seconds for brief bluesy organ passages, repeating this pattern over and over four or five times until the song's end. An okay song. (17.5/20)

3. "Fog in Rossert" (7:11) built over a pretty cool bass line, this one starts out kind of funky before slowing down at the end of the first minute for Gustl to play a pretty melody that must have been lifted by David Shire for his song "With You I'm Born Again" which became a massive hit worldwide when it was performed by Billy Preston and Syreeta (Wright) for the 1980 film soundtrack Fast Break. Fortunately, the song moves back and forth between this motif and the funky opener with another interesting percussion interlude in the sixth minute before everybody comes back together for the low-key finish. (13.375/15)

Total Time 33:59

As alluded to in my review of FROM's only other album, I really respect and like the talents, commitment, and engineering of From's music. I only wish the band had been able to pull off another song or two to solidify the fact of their commitment to the new jazz/Jazz-Rock Fusion that they seem to be matriculating toward--or that they had stayed together for at least one more album cuz they had so much potential. After this album release all three of the founding quartet broke off into separate projects--some as band leaders, a few in other jazz combos.

B+/4.5 stars; a near-masterpiece of early "mainstream" "First Wave" Jazz-Rock Fusion--an album that I highly recommend to all prog rock lovers--and especially jazz and J-RF lovers--if only for the experience of hearing such an incredibly tightly-synchronized band rendered with such phenomenal sound engineering.