Austrian prog-rock-band.
It is "an independent mixture of psychedelic, progressive rock, classical music, electronics, jazz blues with highly artistic demands." This was the masterpiece, which was never reached in level by themselves again.
The LP got even better critics than Emerson, Lake Palmer s work Tarkus at the time. The original-LP was released in an edition of 1500 copies. Four discs in Hans Pokora's book 1001 Record Collector Dreams and it can hardly be found today.
(with bonus tracks)
Track Listing
1. New born Child (7:45)
2. Selfmade Trip (10:29)
3.
A New Way (7:04)
4. Indra Elegy (11:43)
5. Irminsul (2:10)
6.
Yggdrasil (3:40)
7. Stories (4:39)
8. Cheese (4:38)
Line-up
Horst Waber / drums
Harald Zuschrader / organ, flute, guitar, sax
Hubert Bognermayer / keyboards
Gerhard English / bass
Heinz Gerstenmair / guitar, organ, vocals
Will Orthofer / vocals, sax
Austria really isn't a hotbed of prog rock, but EELA CRAIG was by and far that country's best known prog rock band, name, for no apparent reason by original guitarist and founder Heinz Gerstmair.
This self-entitled album from 1971 is very obscure and known by very few, as it was originally released on a small Austrian label called Pro-Disc and original LPs since commanding around the $500 range. While their later albums tended to be synth-heavy symphonic prog, this one tends to the bluesy/jazzy psych/prog realm, with the Wurlitzer electric piano dominated (and Hammond organ on only two cuts). The bluesy nature of this album has to do with original guitarist Heinz Gerstmair, and vocalist Wil Orthofer, while drummer Horst Waber gave the band that jazzy touch, add that on with the flute, organ, and acoustic guitar of Harald Zuschrader, bass of Gerhard Englisch, and electric piano of Hubert Bognermayr, and you have the original EELA CRAIG lineup.
While their later albums will be in the symphonic-type prog, this debut album is much more experimental somehow close to the Krautrock scene with moments of proto-psych-prog, as their opening track two-part New Born Child (with its primal screams) and jazz-rock (still NBC), but they were sometimes patchy or sloppy (ie: the NBC s abrupt end of one riff into the final riff break is very clumsy). The self-explanatory Selfmade Trip is an incredible 10-min+ voyage into heavy psychedelic-spacey expansion-minded trip, which will simply ravish early 70 s experimental progheads. Not completely flawless, this track is pure prog.
The second side is also made up of two lengthy tracks with the aptly-titled heavily flute-induced A New Way where they share their absolute enthusiasm with us. But the other lengthy (almost 12-min), Indra Elegy, is a keyboard fest mixed with dramatic saturated guitars, heavenly flutes, constant drumming fury, abrupt (but this time well-designed) tempo changes, good bass lines.The bonus tracks on this album are essential to the band s history and help explain what these guys did for
four years between albums.
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