Hi,
NP: Grobbschnitt - Solar Music Live
In what is an astounding piece, that defines so much what was once considered "_____rock" by a demeaning rock press, this remastered piece and setup is incredible on CD. Their drummer "Eroc" makes Steven Wilson look like a child that is just playing with the knobs. Eroc, besides having been one of the engineeers of the sound of that band, and creator of many of its stage antics (sounds familiar? Mani Neumeier did the same thing with Guru Guru!), also has several solo albums, the first of which is excellent, and the next two that are totally weird, off the rocker, and FAUST on acid, and total fun to listen to. It's a veritable playground!
For the fact that the whole CD (2 of them) are all LIVE material, the recording is pristine, and the quality is insane and totally worth having. And to hear such a crisp recording of the drums and players in concert ... is incredible. I'm not sure I have heard a better recording from 1974 or 1975 that stood out "live" as clean as this ... even cleaned up more later.
"Solar Music Live", like the original, is about 5 or 6 different pieces and many times, these would last as much as one hour plus. The original album, was limited to the length of the LP and only had about 90 minutes of it on 2 LP's. The CD's take away that limitation, and you can hear the whole thing on the first CD, and then a different version, a bit shorter, on the 2nd CD. It has monumental solo's and layers that are very well setup and is a real lesson, on how one can improvise and take the music somewhere without being stuck on a rock'n'roll theme or chords.
This is, for my ears, the true version of the old Fillmore material that was never released for the public on album, but was heard by many folks. A lot of its attraction, is for the feeling it created, which no album can bring about in America, since none of it was released, but hopefully in time, we might even hear some of those things, so we can better see how instrumental it was to creativity in general.
Excellent CD. Worth having.