EILIFF

Quintet from Hamburg, developing a wild sort of organ-driven jazz-rock, that was reminiscent of the better groups of the era, but simply couldn't be really compared to seriously with any other group. Should we mention Brian Auger's Oblivion express or Colosseum, whether closer to Kraan or Thirsty Moon.. The group certainly had a knack for ugly or insignificant artworks, the one here just having the members spell out their names with their body, but what's important is what on the slice of wax inside the cardboard.

Opening up the album on the shortest track Night Of The Seventh Day and its Bird intro (obviously saxman Kalveran's tribute to Charlie Parker), one cannot help but cringe at the awful vocals, not least poorly sung in English but unclaimed as well (bassist Bill Brown sings on the second album), but once this is over with, the rest of the track is actually fairly nice, but it remains the weakest track of the album. Much nicer is the excellent Gammeloni follow-up track, which spreads out its wings in Nucleus or Keith Tippett Group, with Kalveran's sax often treading the dissonant, while Nejadepour pulls in a great psych guitar solo, while Brüninghaus' organ gets the mayonnaise going. A few more horrible vocals open up the 10-min+ Uzzek track, but the track soon settles into a good groove that Out Of Focus would've appreciated (and maybe bettered) and starts improvising for most of the duration of the track.

The flipside is reserved for the 20-min+ Suite (that's its name), which not much more than a lengthy extrapolation on a few themes, (the first on the organ is reminiscent of Thijs van Leer, the second being an out-of-place sitar motif, but around the halfway-mark, Eiliff shows a certain aptitude at developing excellent happy grooves, much the same Auger in his Oblivion Express. Other moments are reminding of Missing link or the second album of Missus Beastly.

Outside the atrocious vocals, this album is an interesting first oeuvre, but with enough cringey debutant mistakes and is not focused enough to make it a wholly enjoyable affair for everyone