Sunday

atomic rooster

...keyboard heavy power trio proggers who mixed blue-eyed soul shouting, jazzy keys and some rock thud into a crowd pleasing arty swill...not the arty 'cleverclever' student nonsense that some dullards(yes/ELP/gentle giant)peddled but a more club orientated street level slop with artiness learned from digging jazz cats on a rush in sweat soaked sweet leaf basements of old london towne...unfortunately they failed to sustain the groove over a full LP and when they didn't have a hook to hang onto they were a bit lumbering which bought the listener right down, but when they were on it they were firing on all cylanders and were delivering a real cool buzz...thats where this double disk compilation blowout covering the hotcha years 70/74 comes in and serves their memory real nice and does justice to their brand of swirling doomy r&b/jazz prog...even here theres a coupla tracks that could have been left off but overall this is some funky stew that hits the spot more than it misses...some cats were of the opinion that when chris farlow came in to do the vocalizing his brand of histionic throat shredding was beyond the pale but listening in the HERE&NOW that aint necessarily the case, it seems to (nearly)fit right in as the decade moves along and the funk guitar chopping comes ripping out the speakers...(although always remembered for the trio work of early days plenty of different cats been through the rooster lineup but head honcho vince crane keeps the patented atomised groove on a true path)...the last couple of tracks on disk two may not be too much like the original sound but it still has that undefinable rooster thing going on...
...get it here...

No comments: