Kraan - Wintrup (1973) [EMI Electrola 7243 8 22669 2 1]

This influential German band came together in the South German town of Ulm in 1967 with a meeting between teenagers Hellmut Hattler, Jan Wolbrandt, Jan Friede, and Johannes Pappert. All four had played in local jazz and rock bands, and they enjoyed jamming together on a casual basis. Though they originally played free jazz, they were influenced by Pharoah Sanders and Frank Zappa and started working on tighter, more structured pieces. After playing on an amateur basis, they decided to get serious about music and moved to the small town of Wintrup, where they lived communally for almost five years. They managed to avoid any kind of steady work, preferring to devote their time to art and film projects and their increasingly tight and professional-sounding band. After considering the name Jack Steam, they named the band Kraan instead. (The name means faucet in Dutch, a fact they were apparently unaware of at the time. It means nothing in German but they liked it because it was easy to remember.) 1972's Wintrup album showed some movement toward a jazz-funk sound, which accelerated on 1974's Andy Nogger. All featured exotic rhythms and complex interplay between Hattler's nimble bass and Wolbrandt's guitar, with Pappert's electronically altered alto sounding like almost anything but a saxophone on some cuts. Pappert's dynamic range was very wide and he was out in front on some tunes and nearly invisible on others. Each album also had some of Wolbrandt's odd vocalizing, which features impressionistic lyrics that are as much sung as spoken, growled, and yelped. Luckily, the vocal pieces are few and comparatively brief, so those who never acquired the taste for Wolbrandt's voice didn't have to listen to it for long.

Tracks:

1. Silver Wings 4:11
2. Mind Quake 7:40
3. Backs 6:40
4. Gut und Richtig 7:33
5. Wintrup 5:21
6. Jack Steam 5:52
7. Fat Mr. Rich (1971 Demo, previous title: Jack Steam) 5:43