Alcatraz
Vampire State Building

THE REVIEW

I discovered them not long ago, precisely in December 2016, and then abandoned them in the depths of the piled-up CDs that are always waiting to be organized. They were from Hamburg, and I found out that this album was recorded in the studio of Kurt Graupner, sound engineer of Deutsche Grammophone, who collaborated a lot with Faust. They play irreverent jazz rock with distorted guitar and a good dose of effects, voices, piano, flute, and tenor sax, drums, and percussion plus a bass guitar in a mix with sometimes soothing and other times wild moments. They know how to carry forward very interesting ideas definitely placed in the kraut environment. Their debut was recorded in just three days, precisely on October 9, 10, and 11, 1971, released in '72, and is hard to find, printed in only three thousand copies for Philips. I feel like recommending it to lovers of krautrock with tendencies toward a strong jazz imprint, to be clearer, I would say to try to associate it with "In A Silent Way" by Miles Davis or La Macchina Soffice or even the early works of King Crimson. Stimulating. P.S. There is a review on Debaser which, before the publication of mine, the site didn’t detect, it dates back to 2011 and is by TheJargonKing, who also rates this work 4.