FRAGMENTS (LIVE '74)

"Fragments" is one of the three 1974 Agitation free live albums, along with the famous "Last" and the less famous "At the cliffs of river Rhine". Here I review the "Garden of delights" CD version which features one more piece than the former release and full pieces versions. Moreover, sound has been much improved, compared to old CD versions.

Here the band plays in a psyche jam style with excellent guitar, as usual. Like in "At the cliffs of river Rhine", the music can be described as a cross of Pink Floyd and Grateful dead for the acid guitar sound. But there's also a more jazzy direction in "Fragments", thanks to keyboards. Fragments has been also compared to Santana, mainly because of percussions.

The summit is reached with the piece "We are men" which begins with excellent drum and aerial keyboard layers, contributing to this floating, almost jazz rock feel, but the psychedelic guitar parts and the space rock developments reminds that it's top psyche prog jam style. The bonus track "Blues" is a nice pure blues, but with a space sound.

"Fragments" is an excellent album, under rated like all Agitation Free albums.

You can't go wrong with any of AGITATION FREE's three live albums, they're all great. This one was released in 1995 but the music is from 1974. The first three tracks and therefore 90% of this album are from the "Final Reunion Concert" recorded November 14,1974. The final short track is from earlier that same year in July. Some really good pictures of the band in the liner notes including one from 1967 where we can see what the band looked like with short hair (haha).

"Someone's Secret" opens with sounds that build with the drums and percussion really standing out.They're just grooving and jamming here. It settles some after 9 minutes as the guitar takes the lead. It's building again. Vocals before 12 minutes and they get quite passionate a minute later as does the music. It all settles back before 14 minutes including vocals then it starts to build again minus those vocals.The guitar sounds really good here. It settles again late.

"Mickey's Laugh" opens with keys,drums, guitar, bass and atmosphere that all trips along. It's building before 3 minutes as we get a fantastic sound. I like the prominant bass too. It settles back after 6 1/2 minutes but we still have lots of chunky bass. "We Are Men" sounds really good especially the drums and percussion as keys and guitar help out. We get an instrumental melody that sounds a lot like "I'm A Man" by the SPENCER DAVIS GROUP that comes and goes. "Mediterranean Flight'" is the concluding track that is spacey and dreamy.

For me this is well worth 4 stars and there is a couple of good bonus tracks included from 1971.