Eiliff - Bremen 1972 (1972/2003)

Formed in the late 60's by Rainer Brüninghaus, Houschäng Nejadepour, Detlev Landmann, Herbert J. Kalveram and Bill Brown, EILIFF were a German instrumental band who turned fusion on its head with a pair of studio albums featuring classy Canterbury-style jamming with bass, guitar and keyboards plus some ethnic instruments thrown in (mostly the sitar). Two live albums were also released, one of which only came out 30 years later. Being somewhat out of step with the then dominant Kosmiche tradition, the band never really made a name for themselves despite displaying some phenomenal musicianship. References include SOFT MACHINE, early KING CRIMSON, COLOSSEUM, NUCLEUS, VDGG as well as Miles Davis and Frank Zappa.

Their eponymous album (71) features some killer keyboards (electric piano), wild guitar and sax interplay with very complex grooves and extended jams. The similar but more psychedelic album "Girlrls" (72) is even more improvisational and jammy, with frequent nods to KING CRIMSON and DEEP PURPLE. On both live albums, the "Bremen 1972 Live" and "Close Encounters With Their Third One" (recorded in 71-72 but only released in 2002), the band moves effortlessly from energetic, fast-paced riffs to more spacey free-form passages with equal skill. The sound quality is surprisingly good on both.

Intense head prog, early 70's style, that will appeal to fans of SOFT MACHINE, EMBRYO and BRAINSTORM.

Recorded after their last studio album and but chronologically before the other posthumous live release, this album is a bit the equivalent of the BBC sessions in Germany. This Bremen radio station apparently often committed groups to play a concert, recording them for a broadcast and some three decades later, the tapes are being issued for the first time legitimately. Eiliff (a deformation of Aleph) was a quintet (from Cologne) that developed an instrumental jazz-rock with a Canterbury feel and some ethnic touches (their guitarist, later with Guru Guru, was of Persian origin) and their two albums were rather wide-spectrumed and a bit unfocused sometimes a bit disjointed, even if the second was tighter than their debut.

Only two tracks on this session, the first being from their recent Girlsrls album and is easily the most representative of the two, with some excellent jazz-rock that seemed to come from a South-eastern English county. The second track is an extended version of their sidelong track (simply called Suite) of their debut album and lasts for over a half-hour. While it holds some excellent moments, it fairly indulgent, filled with lengthy solos, Bruninghaus’ organ driving the group, but clearly everyone is rather proficient with their instrument. Leader drummer Landmann ‘s playing is reminiscent of Johnn Marshall (Nucleus) and halfway into the “epic jam”, you could mistake them for Soft Machine with an added guitar player.

While not that essential, and rather short for a live recording, this album (along with the previous G.O.D. release Close Encounter With Their Third One) is definitely interesting for fans of the group and general jazz-rock fans.