HAND UND FUSS

Without any doubts "Hand und Fuss" has been the more sophisticated and varied one of AERA's first two albums. From the original line-up only Groh and Kreutzeder was left-over and their sound gained a lot from the addition of violinist Christoph Krieger. Musical leadership has been taken over more or less by Kreutzeder and composing has been shared between Groh and the new bass player Peter Malinowski . Their new drummer Lucky Schmidt managed to bring much more forceful rhythms with a jazzier orientation into their music. Musicianship by all band members is here absolutely outstanding and each of the seven compositions is a little gem on its own. Highlights are the highly diversified "Mechelwind", the inventive "Elephen Elephants" with an amazing drum solo and the bolero-type "Kamele On". But the remaining tracks are really not inferior at all to those ones. Maybe worth mentioning that Klaus Kreutzeder presents some jazzy scat singing on "Ad Absurdum", actually the only "vocals" apart from some weird yowling in the finish of the last track.

Finally it's just left to say for me that I'd highly recommend AERA's second album to any Kraut- and Jazz-rock fan best achieved by buying the CD-reissue which combines both of their first two releases for highest value/money ratio.