X-Tet - Premiere Ligne
Freaky, obscure early 80s French album that sounds like it came from a few years earlier, combining progressive rock and out jazz in equal measure. I’d had a copy of this for ages without giving it all that much credit, but the last listen seemed to open it up quite a bit and made me bump it up to a 10 on the Gnoscale. Probably the largest “prog” element in this group is the use of synthesizer, monophonic, totally wacked out and squirly with thick analog tones that almost totally remove the music from its jazz/rock base (no conventional soloing in fusion mode per se). Musically it’s improvisationally based usually on top of riffs or themes and the whole band tends to go to work while they chug away, giving the whole work quite a bit of layering. Like many independent albums of the era, the production is a bit on the thin side, but the music tends to make up for it.
Keef Hartley Band - Halfbreed
Another one of those “Where have you been my whole life?” sort of discoveries. I’d originally started with what I think is the second Hartley album, The Battle of Northwest Six, which I also really liked, but Halfbreed was one of the most impressive albums I’ve heard since, well let’s forget the hyperbole, Micah about a month ago. The Hartley Band, like Colosseum and the Groundhogs, were one of those groups using Mayall’s bluesrock as a jumping point to new explorations of the style and as such can be instantly compared to the first couple Colosseum albums in their combining the style with some jazz and very ambitious songwriting. And of course the album just pops with great instrumental jamming, that central soul the blues brings with it as well as the anything goes aesthetic of the British progressive rock scene. This is where all these paths converge in almost completely harmony. And Esoteric will be releasing this soon remastered!
The Amboy Dukes - Journey to the Center of The Mind
I’ve been hearing this classic single quite a bit in recent years, it popped up in the show Six Feet Under and I think even House just in the last few weeks, showing it to be almost an instant badge of the psychedelic era, able to evoke the period as well as any other single. The other thing the Dukes are well known for is guitarist Ted Nugent, yes, well before he became the NRA supporting right wing posterboy, although he definitely should get some props for the songwriting here as well, all of which doesn’t deviate too far from the formula found in the single, very psychedelic rock (this could almost be the template for the later Dukes of the Statosphear) with harmony vocals and the occasional cutting fuzz solo by Nugent (a standout for me was “Flight of the Byrd”). While I think the band got even more interesting by the time of Marriage on the Rocks, there’s a lot like to here although it’s probably going to continue to date as it ages.