SAAT

3.5 stars. EMTIDI were founded in London, England in 1970 by the duo of German Maik Hirschfeldt and Canadian Dolly Holmes. They would relocate though to Berlin, Germany and release their debut also in 1970. Many call that one a sentimental hippy album made by amateurs. Heck, Dolly plays kazoo on that one. Yup she's Canadian. I remember how popular kazoos were when I was as a kid in 1970, and also how annoying they sounded.

So while these two multi-instrumentalists "get by" on this Kraut/Folk recording, they also get some professional help from Dieter Dierks who adds percussion, bass and mellotron. Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser produced this. Dolly plays a variety of keyboards and sings, while Maik adds guitars, bass, flute, vibes and synths. This record has a lot of organ and synths leading the way. It just doesn't go far enough for me in the Kraut direction like say WITTHUSER & Westrupp's masterpiece "Trips + Traum" or as far a Folk goes it's a pale comparison to CAROL OF HARVEST's much more professional sounding debut. But I like this better than the band BROSELMASCHINE, so there's that.

I do like the two longer tracks "Touch The Sun" and "Die Reise" and both are over ten minutes long, plus the short "Traume", a very psychedelic piece with ethereal vocals. I'm not into the other three folky pieces though.

It's interesting that when Dolly left the band after this record that Maik tried to keep EMTIDI afloat by adding three musicians to try to record a new album. But he insisted on having a female singer, and he could never find a suitable replacement for her. So they disbanded for good. Where did Dolly go? I do recommend this to fans of Folk music, there's a nice keyboard sound to this one.