Third Ear Band
Third Ear Band

THE REVIEW

Are borders closing or not? Does immigration enrich or unsettle "values"? Right or left? But isn't it more beautiful when fusions happen? I'm not talking about historical compromises or tactical party alliances. I mean cultures and flavors. We're still astonished when we rediscover ambient and sounds of raga and the concept of rock mingled with the Orient. America embracing the Mediterranean, and English industries marrying India. Mystical journeys that enrich the minds and allow you to touch strange and surreal realities. The Third Ear Band offers a cultured and picturesque panorama of the English and American hippy generation fascinated by exoticism. It's impressive and admirable how all these groups have managed to express their potential, to focus a concept on high themes, and to blend various experiences.

You savor archaism, alchemies of peoples from distant eras, exotic and bucolic scents. You pause to meditate on the role of man, the meaning of life, and the philosophy, sociology, and art of Ancient Egypt. The first work, "Alchemy," is based on "The Book of the Dead," Hebrew litanies, and Celtic myth. All this mixed and blended into notes, music. It's surreal what the quartet proposes with viola, tablas, cello, and oboe. The minimalist school of Riley is studied and improved; there is thought about how to compose a piece and how to perform the melody. The paths taken are not standard ones but aims to expand, repeat, exorcise the note to propagate a melody designed and enriched by all instruments.

The structures are square, and there's no risk of making the concept monotonous thanks to the sound flow and the depth of the performers. It is one of the most interesting and original realities alongside the Incredible String Band of "A Very Cellular Song," Donovan of "Atlantis," and even Tea & Symphony with "An Asylum For The Musically Insane." The beat, the reverb in the choirs, the acid guitar, and the minimalist and occult Orient merge into one thing: the raga. A world of sounds as vast as that of krautrock and Canterbury sound. A thousand facets and different sensibilities, with those closer to jazz and those more to rock and psychedelia. The square structures of the first "Alchemy" are extreme in 1970 with the second eponymous work, a masterpiece indeed. Centered on the four elements of Greek philosophy (Air, Earth, Fire, and Water), what emerges is pure avant-garde. They refer back to ancestral sounds with the wrenching violin, the terse cello, the dark oboe, and the exoticism of the tablas.

"Mina" by our own Aktuala or "Aries" and "I Cancelli Della Memoria" by Battiato are the perfect examples of raga in Italy, despite significant strides also with "Volo Magico N.1" by dear Claudio Rocchi or some hints in Osanna and in "Aria" by Alan Sorrenti. The setup of these compositions releases traditional canons and are performed to favor meditation and prayer. Meditative reflection and self-analysis were consecrated throughout the Sixties/Seventies, elevating them as bastions of the avant-garde message. Imposing and imaginative are the power of rhythm and the obsessiveness of "Earth." They draw on all facets of humanity, traditions, and cults. It is booming in the frenzy of "Fire," where the tabla increasingly assumes the roles of future electronics without ever losing the rhythm. The dialogues between violins and oboe are divine; the linearity of "Air" is something terrifying, where one is totally hypnotized by the bass of the tablas and the entirely alienating ambient. "Water" possesses an abstraction akin to Schulze's "Ebene," causing the listener to plunge into a series of vortices and surreal spirals. A must-have.