PSYCHEDELIC UNDERGROUND 17

The German label Garden Of Delights has re-released dozens of -- well, in fact nearly two hundred -- more or less obscure and rare German prog albums over the years, each CD with detailed liner notes and pictures, often also with several bonus tracks. Every tenth CD is a sampler of the nine latest re-releases, and the bands are introduced briefly but on a satisfying level (in German / English).

SUNBIRDS was an instrumental quintet playing jazz fusion. The opening track from their debut (1971) is a pleasant, bluesy composition that emphasizes electric piano and flute. - MISSUS BEASTLY is slightly better known, mostly instrumental jazz-rock group of the 70's. Flute dominates on this one, a fresh and percussively strong little piece.- EMBRYO is probably the best known band on this selection. The title song from Bad Heads and Bad Cats (1976) reminds me of the British group Babe Ruth, with the female vocals and jazzy touch.

GUILDENSTERN, an instrumentally oriented group influenced by e.g. Eloy, Genesis and Camel, never released an album, but a decent release was gathered from live and rehearsal room recordings. With a better sound quality it could have come very close to being an excellent symph prog discovery. - The instrumental jazz-rock piece by TETRAGON is from the release Agape which contains previously unreleased stuff. The Nice comes to my mind from the rather jam-like piece emphasizing on organ and drums. - I was quite delighted by the sole album (1976) of LANGSYNE, an English-language psych-folk group. Peaceful 'Morning' is a fairly good outtake from it.

PANCAKE released three different albums, and the third one from 1979 is said to be the hardest. The female vocalist Biggi Zmierczak is frankly quite bad. - The 8th track is a massive live improvisation (37:34) by COSMIC CIRCUS MUSIC. They are compared to the early Ash Ra Tempel. It's not easy to stay awake during this meditation... - And finally, a 12-minute track by a Pink Floyd influenced one-timer VIRUS. The organ-heavy and instrumentally oriented, slightly jazzy piece features great flute contributions.

Otherwise pretty nice selection of vintage German obscurities, but the piece by C.C.M. could have been edited to a decent length in order to have longer tracks from other, more interesting bands.