Brainstorm
Smile a While

Brainstorm – Smile a While 1972

When looking at one of those web pages that collect the ugliest album covers, you can't miss the awkward image on the cover of this record. So, seeing the cover, few, very few, attempt to discover and delve into its content, perhaps hypothesizing it might be as lousy as its image.

The Brainstorm is a German group active in the early '70s in Baden-Baden with a rather limited discography made up of two studio albums and two live albums, plus an early compilation and some participations. They belong, de facto and de jure, to the kraut world, with forays into jazz rock, Canterbury sound, and rock blues. The style is very personal, and the references are more traceable outside of Germany of that era, favoring exploration in territories marked by Zappa, Canterbury Sound, and English jazz and progressive free forms, King Crimson and Family at the forefront. Despite this, and it may not seem like a paradox, listening to it, you taste decidedly Teutonic sounds.
The band, until a few months earlier, responded to the improbable name "Fashion Pink" and engaged in covers of Jethro Tull, Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, and the like, and they seemed to be damn good http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gamaoU2b6C8. Fresh from a name change, they recorded this "Smile a While," their debut album, dated 1972. A work very rooted in its time, which exploits all the classic stylistic features of the period with distorted and fuzz-laden organs, flute, dirty and torn sax, and vocals (few in reality) with powerful voices.

Like in a film edited backwards, you lose the sense of time and space in the score, already at the first intense notes generating the powerful urban jazz rock rich in horns and groove of "Das Schwein Truegt," a sort of kraut jazz degeneration of crimsonian plots. Continuing, you encounter parts of absolute improvisation, always quite moderate and never advancing towards cacophonia or noise. Characteristics assignable, for example, to portions of "Bosco Biati Weib Alles" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NCCh6tVAYo, a piece strongly tainted by the Canterbury Sound of the early Soft Machine and Wyatt's first solo album. But there are also cleaner moments where late psychedelic plots, equipped with a composed elegance, emerge, like "Einzug Der Elefanten," still contrasted by malevolent attacks of pure madness, like "Snakeskin Tango" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXfCW8y0HG0 with the kraut-fried upheaval of the famous "Hernando Tre Caffè." And still theatrics and zappa madness in "You are what's gonna make it last," leading to the great masterpiece of the album with the long, variable, dynamic, and entertaining "Smile a while". As if that weren't enough, additional tracks were recovered for the CD edition, including a live and significantly extended version of "Thesen & Antithesen," a truly remarkable piece dating back to Fashion Pink. If you think you might love a solid jazz rock varied by strong Canterbury and kraut brushstrokes, this is an album to consider seriously.
Sioulette P.a.P.