Another Compilation. Since not every artist and band could have his own record the eastern labels made alot of Compilations. This way smaller or more unknown bands could have atleast one song featured on such a compilation. “Rhythmus” was annually released from 1971 to 1979 and its mostly funk/jazz influenced rock music, with german lyrics of course.

The Song I chose today is B4 – Pantha Rei+Veronika Fischer “Hier und nebenan” and it sounds like a T-Rex-coverversion, but I am not sure about that, I have never listened much to T-Rex to be honest. Maybe someone can shed some light on this.

As always, you can try to get this one on gemm.com.

Tracklist :

A1 – Borodin suite (Alexander Borodin) – 13:20
A2 – Bach ‘75 (Johann Sebastian Bach) – 6:25 (snippet)

B1 – Säbeltanz (Sabledance, Aram Chatschaturjan) – 6.05
B2 – Prelude cis-moll op3. Nr.2 (Sergej Rachmaninov) – 4:40 (snippet)
B3 – In der Halle des Bergkönigs (In the Hall of the Mountain King, Edvard Grieg) – 3:05
B4 – Türkischer Marsch (Turkish March, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart) – 3:53

(play all tracks)

Rainer Uebel (synthesizer, hammond), Wolfgang Riedel (bassguitar), Peter Ludewig (drums), Gisbert Koreng (guitar), Bernd Aust (sax, flute)

Electra was one of the major rockbands in the GDR, playing jazz-influenced rockmusic mostly. They released several records with german lyrics and had quite some success. This is their second which I wasn’t aware of until I found it at a backyard sale. It’s filled with jazz-adaptions of classical pieces from Bach, Mozart, Rachmaninov aswell as my favourate piece of music : B3 – “In der Halle des Bergkönigs” (“In the hall of the mountain king” by Edvard Grieg). I have to say that “Peer Gynt” by Grieg really started my interest in music. Someone played it for me at the age of eight and I remember that I was totally stunned by the sound of all those instruments playing the same melody. Before that I never cared much about music, but this opened my eyes and ears. And 14 years later I discovered this version by Electra.
This record means really much to me.

I also found a video on youtube which features the Turkish March played by Electra at a concert in 1999, have fun. Unfortunately Embedding is disabled, so click here to watch it.

This record is avaiable as Cd-ReIssue (together with “Sixtinische Madonna”, another Electra Record) on Amazon.de, unfortunately not on Amazon.co.uk or .com. But you can try to look on gemm.com for this record or look on google for more information.

Tracklist :

A1 – Strona (snippet)
A2 – Jestes spoznionym deszczem
A3 – Wzejde polnym makiem
A4 – Otwieram list – brazowy wrzesien
A5 – W powszednie dni

B1 – Snij tylko szczescie (snippet)
B2 – Piesn geiry
B3 – Chce byc dla ciebie
B4 – Brzegi lagodne

(play all tracks)

music by SBB (Halina Frackowiak was background singer for SBB for some long time, for her own record they kinda switched the roles – she in the front, the band in the back.)

I chose this one because of its cover … A Fish-Bowl and some Ice and suddenly it all looks spacey. (Thats not her head in there, only a picture). Again thats not really a hit-record for me, some songs are nice but most of their charm comes from the fact that the language she sings in sounds strange and mystical to me, because I dont understand polish. But there are some good licks and breaks to be sampled. Also on a technical sidenote, the whole record sounds abit like a 96kbps mp3 (with a slurry, phased sound), but because it’s an original from the 70s they obviously wanted it this way.

I also found a great vid on youtube that seems to be a mixup between “Hair”, “Amadeus” and “Clockwork Orange” (yeah, sorry, but I find this rather scary …).

Go look on google for Halina Frackowiak or SBB.

Shopping links:

Halina Frackowiak – Amazon.de | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | gemm.com
SBB – Amazon.de | Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com | gemm.com