Kolinda s/t
Kolinda are a long running Hungarian folk group who by nature of their association with the French progressive folk label Hexagone have become an artist of interest for fans of progressive folk and rock. Their music tends to stay in ancient and traditional Eastern European modes and by this nature tends to be tonally similar to more outside music. The music is string heavy and choppy, almost similar to Art Zoyd in a slight way and mostly percussion free, with a vocal presence that uses harmonies prominently fronting ten shorter songs. While Kolinda’s music would improve in parallel to that of their label mates Malicorne, becoming more progressive and inventive over their label arc, even on their debut here they were pretty interesting and diverse. Later the band apparently went in two different directions due to diverging musicians, but most of those seem a lot less interesting than this early period.
Daevid Allen - Good Morning
It’s always interesting to me just how different Daevid Allen’s music is outside of Gong, even the earlier albums right after he left. This one in particular is almost folk, with picked acoustic guitar work, often effected and psychedelic, acting as the background for Allen’s spiritually inclined lyrics. Here his tone strikes a middle between the yin/yang comic/serious nature of the Radio Gnome Trilogy, being quite a bit more straightforward and more or less predicting the direction of his career. When I first heard this music and a couple of Allen’s other albums, I didn’t really like them at all, but now I’m far more appreciative of the inventiveness of the style. Euterpe in particular give the music a slightly Mediterranean feel which is something also absent from Gong and the somewhat electronic nature makes this anything but a more traditional singer/songwriter folk rock album and towards something a bit more transcendent.