Leaf Hound - Growers of Mushroom 

Early 70s British, bluesy hard rock band that’s reformed in recent years, this album mostly reflects the more mainstream hard rock of the time, anything from the Stones and Humble Pie and on to Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. Like many of these groups there’s a mixing of harder riff constructed songs and earthier acoustic numbers, although with Leaf Hound you’ll get the longer organ and guitar flights that fit the album’s original release in Germany more than the country of origin for the bandmates. It’s all got the sound of the era, although very little of it is particularly progressive or innovative for the time, which isn’t atypical of the debut album.

Leon Thomas/Nucleus - Montreux ‘71

Kind of interesting collaboration, although I only tentatively say so as I thought I might have read it didn’t end up being Nucleus and it reminds me so much of Sunrise on Magic Mountain, also recorded at Montreux in 1971, that I wonder if there was unintentional duplication. However, while listening to it, the guitarwork and the occasional oblique instrumental arrangement made me wonder if it was actually living up to its billing. Whatever the case it’s definitely an enjoyable electric set with a brilliant singer in his prime.

Ramatam s/t

Like a more ballsy Allmans Brothers Band, this band hints at emerging southern rock groups like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet, although not quite there yet and having heavy roots like Deep Purple that aren’t quite absorbed yet. It has a very strange, echoey sort of production and several segments with mellotron that mark it as a period piece. Such a combination reminds me of bands like the US Leviathan and Asia, but there’s still quite the biker vibe going here that almost sounds like Hawkwind or the Groundhogs. King of a strange but rather excellently rendered album altogether, the guitarwork largely lifting the rest of the band along. Can imagine this would be one the stoner rock crowd would get behind, it predates bands like Alabama Thunderpussy over three decades before.