Klockwerk Orange
Abrakadabra

Does it make sense to review a practically unfindable and never reissued on CD LP in the year 2008?

I believe so, if it could ever help to raise awareness for someone who can recover a masterpiece like this album and bring it back to the light it deserves and that it has never seen since its release.

We are in Austria, and the release year of this admirable masterpiece is 1975 (CBS S 81119).

Once played, we immediately realize that ELP have been through here and influenced the Austrian area just as much as they - it goes without saying - influenced the German one, for the clear cultural, ethnic, and linguistic affinities that bind the two nations.

Many sought fortune and success in music in these parts, but few came out of it unscathed. Our boys didn't even come close to success, yet the grooves of the record erupt copiously with ideas of incredible originality with a crystalline freshness.

The leader of the group was Herman Delago, who took his first steps in music at the Academy of Music in Innsbruck; in this record, he played guitar, trumpet, and organ. With him were Markus Weiler on organ and synthesizer, Guntram Burtscher on bass and vocals, and Wolfgang Boeck on drums, timpani, and tubular bells.

The band's name derives from the orange color of Wolfgang's drum kit and Klockwer: "to beat," in Tyrolean dialect.

Delago, naturally, is the musical and spiritual guide of the group but also of the entire hippie community of those areas; he himself recounts: «We used to rehearse at my house in Zams, and the rehearsal room became the meeting point for the hippie generation... I was then enchanted between Bruckner's symphonies, neo-romanticism, and the rock music of the '70s».

Throughout the album, we find very brilliant organ passages, a precise rhythm, but the surprise is the trumpet, here elevated above all with a sound that ranges from military to medieval, symphonic to classical, with a disarming simplicity in its beauty. It is precisely the simplicity that reigns, but it is only apparent: behind it, one can sense the compositional idea that flows clearly over the classical studies digested by the composer during his probably long nights spent studying the scores.

Let the music flow: you will find elegiac, epic, pastoral, solemn sounds with sudden Fellini-like cinematic turns, playful and extremely satisfying.

Who knows if one day a Mr. Moroni or someone else will want to return to new generations a beautiful work like this Abrakadabra.

Delago continues laughing: «Back then, as a high school student, bringing an LP to music class was very cool, I brought my LP, and it was naturally very special».