TANIT LIVE

Poor sound and late release makes this of limited interest and you might want to invest in the "complete works" if you really want this. Ok , the tracks are not the same than their only studio release, so this might be worth picking up if the studio album interest you, but this was not commercialized in the 70's but just for chauvinism's sake it does get another half star . This should make more than fifty words :-)

LAGGER BLUES MACHINE are from Belgium.This is a live release from a 1970's concert in Brussells where they opened for a few bands including WISHBONE ASH. The sound quality isn't the best and they really sound simply like a heavy jam band here, there's nothing that reminds me of Zeuhl on this recording. I really like the first two tracks but the other three are poor at best.This was actually released posthumously in 1992, so it's a chance to hear the band before they even released their first and only studio album.

"Born To Be Alone On A White Desert Island" sounds pretty good early with the bass, drums and guitar standing out. Vocal melodies and flute join in.The organ rips it up before 2 minutes.The drums and guitar amaze 4 minutes in.Vocal melodies are back as themes start to be repeated.

"Test About Rehabilitating Personality" kicks in with drums and guitar before a minute. Just a killer jam really. "Ode" is where things turn south fast. The vocals for one are bizarre and the sound quality is worse. "Mistake" features a prolonged drum solo. "Firedance" is another one where the vocals and sound disappoint. An incredible guitar solo though after 4 minutes.

Fans only for this one.Get the studio album if you can.

Lagger Blue Machine was something like a legend among Belgian rock bands, starting from Itterbeek and featuring a young Christian Duponcheel on keyboards, later member of Dragon.Other members of the early line-up were Jean-Luc Duponcheel on drums, José Cuisset on guitars and Michel Maes on bass.The band was an undisputed live beast back in early-70's and a historical document of a 1970 live performance at Woluwe Shopping center in Brussels (supporting Warhorse and Wishbone Ash) was caught and released in 1988 in a limited number of 500 LP copies.

The sound of the album is very raw and the quality of the recording quite mediocre to present the band at its full potential.The opening ''Test about a rehabilitating personality'' is pretty much the most interesting track in here with a very adventurous sound in a Hard Prog vein, featuring some excellent guitar breaks and complex themes, not far from a cross between WARHORSE and KING CRIMSON or even some Kraut Rock monsters of the time.The quality drops significantly with ''Ode'', where the vocals are really unbearable, while the music is pretty average guitar-led Hard/Psychedelic Rock with some SOFT MACHINE influence in the middle part.With ''Mistake'' the presence of Christian Duponcheel is finally obvious and this is another complex Progressive Rock composition with obscure interplays and some fiery organ throughout, spoiled by the very long middle-part drum solo.The gig of Lagger Blues Machine closed with ''Firedance'', featuring a rough complicated Hard Rock sound with guitars on the forefront, delivering furious grooves with sudden breaks, again a uninteresting solo in the middle wasn't much needed, but these belongs among the activities of a live performance.

Considering the mediocre quality of this live recording along with the fact that these recordings already belong among a future Mellow Records release with all the stuff Lagger Blues Machine ever recorded, thIs LP comes only recommended to die-hard fans of Hard Prog and the strict circle of the collectors' zone.

In the beginning

I have previously to this review spoken about the evolution of Zeuhl, and how it came into fruition through a multitude of various paths. This Belgian outfit describes the early development of the music beautifully - a music that very soon would transform into huge cataclysmic skyscrapers of sound. This branching started out as acidic jams and Belgian lager.

Lagger Blues Machine released their sole album in 1972, with this a live album popping up some 20 years later during the resurgence of prog rock in the 90s. By 1972 this group's sound had progressed from these hazy and fuzzy beginnings, that on here sadly are amplified grotesquely due to a very grainy recording. Damn...

Tanit Live sounds like a hard rock band jamming it out on stage after a case of beers and a pipe of space tobacco. The guitar work resembles the kind of blues riffing that Yardbirds once made famous, only here it is accompanied by plodding rhythm textures and the occasional reed tweet. It's hard recognising the future band to come - especially hearing the distinctive blurry psychedelics at work here, that more than often reveal a foot and a half safely planted in the preceding decade.

So no Zeuhl here then? No and yes. No, because the jamming character of the thing, leaning on fuzzed out psychedelia and hard hitting blues rock, leaves the rhythm section (that is the single most important ingredient in the Zeuhl mix) swaying and confusingly blurry. Yes, because Tanit still holds a good deal of pumping organ breaths, that on occasion approach the big booms of the Zeuhl genre - the ones that mimic grand symphonic sweeps of rock music......... Still, a very long ways from the terrific psychedelic take on the genre they conjured up two years later.

This should please fans of dirty jamming hard rock, and people with an interest in the history behind the teutonic branch of fusion. Moreover will it please folks who love the gritty and naive in music - live recordings that sound like they've been handed over to you by way of telephone chord and a prehistoric turntable from the time of Julius Caesar.