WAKE UP!

After reading two or three reviews, or should I say "all of it", and being interested by firmly stated opinion that German band Out of Focus is absolutely worth a listen, I found this record, and must say, was pleasantly surprised. I expected something that someone called Krautrock, someone called jazz-rock, but oh no, none of those. It's simply good psychedelic rock.

If information on back sleeve is correct, album is recorded in only 7 days, on two sessions, what is really amazing, for unknown band, and for music like this. It's album that You can listen to many, many times not to became enough of it. But that is the point where I would slightly disagree with others reviewers, because I think that it is not a sign of it's extraordinary music quality, but of band's extraordinary improvisational skills, resulting in good and original debut album, longer then average record of that time. Like many bands that wanted to part from standard rock idiom, choice of keyboards and especially flute was good decision, and overall feel on album is like on some live recording from Fillmores, Winterland or London's Paris theatre, and no one would guess they are Germans (alright, the accent again).

After first, strong rock song, comes two longer pieces, that together with last song on album, all have nice dreamy flute passages in the middle, as a pattern, between harder sounding leading and ending parts. Occasional, but very unique singing are often word by word, mostly sharing the same melody as other instruments. There is reminiscent of some other bands, but nowhere too much to say they sounded closely to them. In "World's End" there is the same song structure as in "The End" from The Doors. But if someone tries to pull out improvisation parts from the songs, the remaining parts will be hard recognized as basic songs, and this is the problem with the short "No Name" that sounded somehow unfinished.

So, the performance is good, but my rate of record is neither excellent nor essential. Having not "half a star" as more precise rate to raise it a little, I think three stars is quite acceptable measure. There are other albums with similar sound and feel, so if You missed this one, it's nothing to worry about. But if You buy it, don't worry, You won't be sorry.