Lady Lake - No Pictures (Reissue, Expanded Edition) (1977/2010)

The story of this obscure Dutch band starts when Prog Rock was in the peak of the creativity back in 1973 in the traditional town of Deventer in the Netherlands from where all the members are, the name was chosen in reference to the famous album of the Welsh band GNIDROLOG, but it was not the original, during their first gig in a Deventour venue called "The Bottle" as a Progressive Blues Oriented band (In the vein of pre "Benefit" JETHRO TULL), they were known as SESSION and in the middle of it they decided to change their name to LADY LAKE.

Being that all the members were from the same town, they had grew together listening to the pioneers of Prog, so it was not hard for Toon Heisterkamp (guitar), Ronnie Breurman (bass), Hans van Bockel (guitar), Fred Rosenkamp (guitar), Gerbert de Ruiter (sax, flute, guitar) and Peter Schoemaker (drums) to work with comfortably since the start, but the band simply disappeared in 1974.

In the same town, another young bands called DELAY was being formed simultaneously and comparisons between the two started, but in 1976 the keyboardist Leendert Korstanje leaves DELAY and approaches to Fred Rosenkramp so they decide to form a new band with Eddy Bakker (bass) and Joop van Leeuwen (drums) that takes the name of LADY LAKE because it was already famous in Deventour.

At the end of 1977 LADY LAKE made a short trip to a neighbor town to record their debut album "No Pictures" in Mira Sound Studio, they only released about 1,500 copies and a good number of them was sent to Sweden and Norway..

"No Pictures" (The name was chosen as a joke because a local newspaper didn't published some photos of them) is a very rich album in musical influences, the main structure is Symphonic as most Prog bands from The Netherlands but includes a great range of atmospheres, which go from Psychedelia to Hard Rock in the vein of Kansas, not a masterpiece but worth getting it.

The story continues with the band touring with other Dutch bands with constant changes in their lineups but seems they never intended to be a 100% professional band, in 1995 MUSEA approaches to LADY LAKE to manifest the interest in upgrading "No Pictures" to CD with bonus material, after finding the master tapes damaged they were disappointed but due to modern techniques the were able to restore them and add some material from 1979 and later, so at last in 1997 we can get a new version of an old classic.

In the year 2005 and after more than two decades of their debut, LADY LAKE releases their second album called "SuperCleanDreamMachine" with new material released by MUSEA Records with a lineup consisting of Leendert Korstanje in the keyboards. Fred Rosenkramp on the guitar and Jan Dubbe in the drums, this time the Hard Rock sound is less evident than in "No Pictures" and they play in a style reminiscent of CAMEL with a hint of the brilliant Flemish Symphonic of FOCUS.

According to their official site we must keep the eyes and ears on LADY LAKE and I'm sure we won't have to wait another 25 years for their third release.