SECRET OYSTER [AKA: FURTIVE PEARL]

The first album from Secret Oyster is much in the vein of where the Burnin' Red Ivanhoe left off. Though now the band, also incorporating members from at least one other Danish prog/psyche act Hurdy Gurdy, were mainly composing instrumentals with a wild free form attitude and developing their looping hypnotic tunes around Karsten Vogel's swirling and loud saxophone's. Though the band do lay down a steady rhythmic pattern the guitar and aforementioned saxophone improvise and express hints of psyche with a tendency to develop progressive like patterns and tasting the realms of jazz/rock fusion, the genre which was making heady waves during the early seventies. "Dampexpressen" is certainly expressive but never damp, there is a humourous element here in the music and it is very much like Burnin' Red Ivanhoe on this track, while "Fire And Water" presents a sound that would be more inclined to be regarded as typical Secret Oyster, if it would be fair to label them that. "Public Oyster" is a cool breeze trip of avant garde with some textured wah wah guitar from Claus Bøling and a clever play on words before we get stoned and zoned out of our minds with "OVA-X". While stepping into the waters of fusion the Secret Oyster retain a quality and style in their music that is very familiar when compared with the bands later albums, here they sound rough and ready. They would progress and get better, become more cohesive and acquire a Secret Oyster sound rather than simply be a band that derived from the Burnin' Red Ivanhoe. But they frustratingly moved along producing solid albums without the commercial success that many lesser acts were adorned with. Not only were they just one of Denmark's finest groups but one of the better fusion acts from that period.