This crew came together back in 2008 and provide an update on the hypnotic days of psychedelic rock, spacey sound vistas and light show accompaniment. Impact they certainly have and the release of this live set affords the chance to check their aural attack and qualities…On this release the personnel comprises Yves Krismer, Benedikt Trenkwalder and Jan HauBels..bad hands at Scrabble ..with guests Charly Mair and Andreas Haslacher. Bergisel in Austria is the setting.

Intro / Street Jaman has a moody, ambient start. All very ominous and a bit ELP with the sequencers twittering away and a wobbly topline bursting into bombastic drumming, thundering bass and glacial slide guitar. It’s a bit like an unhinged Pink Floyd as an overall ensemble sound. Eat and drink to the followers of wilder prog.

For me, it’s more Hawkwind gone ape. Then we are into The Killer, a space blues soaked in guitar reverb and a semi-anguished vocal. An angular chord sequence adds to the unsettling weaving of the tune. There is an ever-present sense of pent-up power just waiting to be unleashed, A deep legato guitar run oozes from the sound. A string scrape @ 4:30 leads us into an intense corridor of noise that the drums seem to want to bust out of. It’s a claustrophobic aural tunnel that ups the tension. For me, a tad grim-faced but it does come over as focussed and full of intent. A weird bongo break ! Where on Earth are we bound? nearly eight minutes are gone. Then it stops and…

Hide And Seek starts straight away and a treated vocal tells the tale as the synths curl away and the emphatic drumming dominates the ensemble. The anguished singing puts force above clarity, but that’s often the case with harder prog, it must be conceded. The crew do play as a proper band and have quite a grip on intensity and insistence. The keyboard goes all atonal and peters out. No! It’s coming back! Then Isolation starts, still mining that chilly dark-blue ambience. The singing sounds end-of-tether pained. Slivers of octave guitar fight Hammond block chording, there is a hint of Kashmir. Cool bass chording is heard over the ascending spaceship axe whining. Busy drumming keeps its relentless push going.

Isolation starts with wobbly chorus’d arpeggio guitar. The singing is less frantic for a while, the drums close to Sabbath. Chords rattle from the guitar, the bass thumps. Blank Soul sounds strangely familiar, riff-based and rowdy, whilst Gojira jumps in off feedback with a grinding metal motif, the song lurching along with a grimy sway.

A dark trip into this act’s music, great for keen fans. A little alienating to others, a lot of the time perhaps.

Pete Sargeant