(KrautRock) XHOL - Hau-RUK 1970, Germany - 1970, APE (image + .cue)

LP Ohm OMM 56.014 / CD Germanophon 941065 (1995 - Bootleg) / CD Garden of Delights GoD 076
Доп. информация: XHOL was one of the first bands who participated at the send of the 60s to the launch of the Krautrock movement in Germany. Nevertheless their music cannot be categorised. Their roots came from rhythm’n blues with soul tendencies. With their second album “electrip” they rapidly found their own style which can be considered as an original fusion of free jazz, psychedelic rock and electronic experimentations. Very dynamic their jazz rock can sometimes be compared with the spirit of the psychedelic soul developed by SOFT MACHINE. However the unusual use of electric instruments and electronic manipulations made XHOL absolutely unique. After "Electric", the band carries on their musical adventure with two great and totally free jazz rock albums. Dominated by endless, electric and cool improvisations "Hau Ruk" is a must for fusion and jazz lovers. Their last studio album “Motherf**kers GmbH" recorded in 1972 is a monument. All the compositions have their own feelings, sometimes delivering captivating and powerful blues, kraut, and jazz elements. However this album put the stress on a second fascinating side of XHOL’s musical universe: experimental organ works and psych/ folk interludes. This last album is nearer to Krautrock mesmerizing musical themes, more twisted, spacey and devoted to avant-garde. XHOL’s influence on a bench of german prog bands and on the adepts of free rock music in general is undeniable.

So now , here we have an extraordinary band (well actually i only know this album, but the quality shown here is good enough to say that is an extraordinary band) which comes from Germany, Xhol? i dont know what does Xhole mean , if it`s a german word or a name i dont know and i dont care, but im going to be tremendous honest with you, i have a list when i write all the albums i own, no matter if they are on mp3 etc, so i clearly remember that my "x" letter was empty and that was the original reason that took me to get an album by a band whose name starte with x.

Here i am happy with Xhol, which is still my only "X" band, i also know XII Alphonso but i dont have any of their albums. Xhol seems to be easily placed in the Krautrock genre because they are from Germany and their first album was released in the late 60`s , sol when the prog rock movement and obviously the name of Kraut began to rise to the world and grow up like a child, but in my opinion, at least my experience with this album, it doesn`t have the strong, weird, raw sound of Krautrock (im not an expert by the way, so i can be easily wrong), but a progressive Jazz sound , which actually also is not a clear sound overall that makes me say that this could be a jazz / fusion band, but i think is a closer genre which can describe this .

"Breit" is the first of three looong songs included in this album ,by the way called Hau - Ruck, which has a very slow tempo, as you can imagine a long 24 minute song could have some changes on it, and progress during it, so if you want to give it a chance, dont get desperate because believe me is so slow and could be a bit boring for you, but after 10 minutes it changes a bit to a faster tempo , in that part i find a bit of Canterbury sound, only a bit and because of the piano sound and the sax.Also i think the quality of the audio is not the best, not so clean, but anyway it can be compensated with the quality of the music. Let me tell you one important thing, this album doesn`t have guitars, so as you can imagine what we will enjoy here is the sound of drums, bass, and saxophone overall, giving to it the special jazz touch, also we will notice a synth making some back noises which could sound as waves or something.

"Schaukel" is the second of three tracks in the album, again a long epic over 20 minutes of great music, but the difference here is that in this one we will find since the beggining a faster and stronger sound, which actually becomes slower later but it`s just an advice, all the time we will notice the prescence of the saxophone taking the leading role of the song, maybe instead of what is a lead guitar, but it`s great i honestly dont miss the guitar here, despite i do love it light years more than the sax, but each one has it`s moments and here is only for sax. In somewhere of the song we will hear vocals for the first time, and a completely blues oriented sound.

"Suden twi Westen " is the last song of this album and my personal favorite, again it has the always Xholesque slow tempo sound, this song makes noises like a hwhistle or something, i think is a flute which is a curious sound during the song, while the drums are always playing, little by little the other instruments are joining to the song, taking the saxophone as the leading instrument as well, but here we listen to 2 saxophones interacting each other, one is louder than the other, but its a great jazz moment which i adore when i listen to it ,then it makes an stop, to then starts again with the organ sound. so the progression is coming again, that`s all about the album i think, also this song features the best flute moment of the album along with the so mentioned saxophone.

Very nice album, not my favorite at all, but im pleased with it , a great discover and as you read my ridicolous pretext to get this album , was not a mistake, i recommend it to any of you, jazz lovers or not, but be careful, 3 long songs could be so boring for you, so you know if you have the mood to get it or not.

I find most awarding, most pestilential and most macadamized for Xhol to be connected to the starting intense kraut rock power-expression through this album, Hau-Ruck , thanks to its dark experimental/improvisatorial epic arrangement, and out of the passion for acid notions, whether we're talking sound, noise, jazz, blues or rock. The power of such a moment is intense and profound, something Xhol accomplished rarely (or maybe rare was the recording such movements). Finely tuned is Xhol in general (trying the Altena records or the Electrip chosen classic album bears, ultimately, the entire concept of music development and sound kriegspiel, they're good and tasty too) , through the powerful means of music evolution, sight permation and vision ultrication. But the best and utmost artistic types are hard, drenched (a word I'll repeat along the review) and sophisticated - at least by my pleasure principle and standard color.Fpro Kraut, in basic stuff. Xhol, in individual shine.

Breit starts by a low phase, a sumptuous clean intro and a hypnotic slow move, in sax and bass drenches, in cluster improvisations and meticulous sound-damp inspiration. It starts already to show nervousness by the low keyboard moans, but the rich free spirit of the spirit instrument and by the chemistry of acid meeting sadistic slow harmonics. The entire ensemble wakes in, practically, a minor hypnotic jazz rumble, with the usual opening beats, but, already, the incisive smokes of vision and psych-perdition. The improvisation last long enough to mind-scrape the most elegant, fashioned or intro-verbal points of cochic pleasure. The music neglects tonality or rock, at best giving the low incision in the perforated dream, the "hau-ruck"; there's hardly a fixed theme, other than improvising a serene kind of dark melody, inconspicuous inventiveness and strange substance phenomenon. The gout of music and sense rapidly connects to the psych veracious dream or the frivolous kraut pettish sermoning. Music needs a chant, and that is given by the free-lance dark mood, one not fit enough to paranoid the stage, but good enough to dust the record and the echo into a powerful breathless daze. At the high point of the actually melodic, slow-fictive and dark-gray fusion, things are resting into a mid-tempo, an acidic breeze and a fleeting force. The rock tone of this piece's creative slow writing is a mumble, but also a concise composition. When the eclectic mingle starts to create powerful and lascivious motions, the end of the soft fusion is conducted into a straightening vision and a powerful cadence. The rest lies in the impetuosity of three characters: the bang of instrumentality, making an improvisation of sounds and driven mad (for sax and drums though, this is just seemingly, the ambit of the free-stretch is consistent with the mindful acts of glamorously shock-sound); the rock new wave, making desirable all the picoting impressions; the kraut additional touch of hau-resonating, with a bit of mazedness always mixing the language of reproachful aggressiveness and calibrated torrent (or versatile) clairvoyant powers. Another kind of shell-reverberation is artistic, condense in the entire bass-drums-synth indications, plus in the forms of colors and tension. The sensations accomplish the widest range of blues-pouch, rock-grief, acid-fusion and technical explosion, marking the style as a peaty, fledgy or courageously thermal rock-arum. Power, surround and a bit of excessive craft.

Schuakel has a much more environment and style-fixed expression, through various continuing improvisations or through the fusioned melody, one that complements the art through a benevolent passion. Breit fooled around with a lot of key-atonal heavy music, something not calamining, but worth contrasting with this piece of mood, of jazz, of sax-acid tern vocalizing, of beat and struggle. The experiment brings forth the value of colors being in-tempo and out-warded, whilst the gray materia of the sound is still made out of crunches, technicalities and vibrations. There are no slow pace, there is endless strength of sax hollow-ism, drums-pathetism and a bit of moog flavor to add. There is hardly a hysteria in this powerful collapse of sound (that's for past tenses, or for new brilliancies), more present is the fight to define the dream behind the concept, the touch behind the arrhythmia and the powder of the masked Xhol character. The music is powerful, corroding and has the problems of unaccessible sounds and un-expansive mimesis. Interestingly, the artist list here doesn't mention vocals, but someone certainly awakes into shouting some drunk psychedelic rage-lyrics. The dark fleeting points direct meditation or master-sounds; the great escapes and elixirs explore from the psych late blues to the plastic keyboard revolutionary free simplicity, from the caustic way of instrumentality to the peaceful trend of non-symbolic sudden, bursting or lent-forming imaginations. Some mad drenches being the artistic coup, other refrain the old jam habit. At the end of the blues-kraut-rock-rum session, the band presents themselves as "Xhol; X-H-O-L". The relevance is much more brilliant, in act and fact.

Suden Twi Westen tries a third expression, by a bonus chance, but only a few things come ultra-original: like the flute acid passion play, the rich concentrated hor ambiance or the shock-lifting touch of music-per-emotion. The rest cracks a bit of jam jazz, climaxing intensely, a bit of atmospheric kraut, doing the persuasive minor tones, or the beat rock, doing a very important role in the concentrated or lubricate impressions of minimalistic or hedonistic sound. The piece is excellent, but frightened by exactly the too much passion it holds. A large motion is dedicated to the improvisation, but even more to the melody inside the drench.

A perpetuating dark, incisive, acerbic, xholesque improvisation, featuring the best of all elements that Xhol allude: blues, jazz-rum, rock-palpitation and kraut (acid base) expressions. To the kraut ultimate amorphous power, this is still acid jazz, stress sound and brew-vibration. The sonic experiments, the void collapses and the full psych extricated emotions are just around the corner of the genre. Hau-Ruck: a brilliant, defying hard-listening and deep-free impression. Four bright, best stars.

One of the very first (if not THE first group) for whom the term “Krautrock” was coined, Xohl had by now dropped the Caravan name, and their improvised psych rock full of lengthy tracks (and their almost unavoidable lengths) were the norm. Whether this is their third of fourth (the boundary between Soul Caravan and Xhol is a difficult one) album, it stands as one of their definitive statement, even if some passages sound awfully close to the second life of Traffic (with Kwaaku Reebop). Titled on a iffy German pun and graced with an equally iffy artwork (the back cover being hard to deciffer), this album is close to a textbook case of self-indulgent release, but if you love live jamming, you should be in for a treat with this one.

Indeed the first side is taken up entirely by a Traffic-like live jam improv (called Breit) that should have the latter’s fans drooling (even if the sound is sometimes approximate) with plenty of interplay. The flipside (Schauzel) is not much different, bar a free-jazz passage, even if it includes a Rock Me Baby improv in the middle;

While for some, this album may come as a summit in self-indulgence, those loving this kind of album will be delighted to know that the excellent Garden Of Delight label has not only reissued this album, but added yet another track of the same genre (and length) Suden Twi Vesten, which fits so perfectly the album as if it had always been a part of it. I speak in terms of improv and feel, but Saxman Belbe introes the track on a flute/recorder. This track brings the album to a whopping 67 minutes.

EAC extraction logfile from 27. April 2008, 9:40 for CD
Xhol / Hau-Ruk

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