INDWELLER

Cautoin: this record - the fifth offering by the band - is absolutely dire. You are recommended to avoid it at all costs. Aside from seven minutes of indescribably beautiful interplay between Raja Ram on flute and Alan on guitar on "It's all the Same", it is utter garbage from start to finish. Destroy on sight.

The group had, by this stage, parted company with both the masterly vocalist and front-man, Shiva (Phil) Jones, and his side-kick on rhythm guitar, Dave Codling - (each of whom was soon to re-surface in the short-lived KALA) - and thereafter succeeded only in carting their pseudo-Eastern mystic baggage down an increasing number of dead ends until they, finally and thankfully, wholly imploded.

But it was all so tragic. The fact is that, whereas the band's five albums between them only contained enough decent music to justify filling one mid-price CD (never mind the two full-priced, chant-riddled offerings they eventually put out), when performing "live", away from the confines of the studio, they were simply electrifying - probably one of the most memorable bands I have ever seen - and could manufacture an absolutely fantastic atmosphere through their magical playing, with Alan's virtuoso lead guitar wailing and floating gloriously above the driving, tight-knit rhythm supplied by Jake, Dave and Shambhu, whilst Raja Ram danced with his flute and Shiva danced with the audience. This was psychedelic rock at its finest. Some scoffed and said it was ridiculous and pretentious. Maybe. But who cares? The band was terrific when I saw them in 1969, even better when I saw them in 1970, and absolutely magnificent when I saw them in 1971. So stuff the critics, as far as I am concerned, the only sense impression that counts is my own, and, in my view, Quintessence were just a truly dynamic "live" outfit who couldn't hope to recapture in the studio the atmosphere they generated on stage and, predictably, fell miserably and depressingly short.....

and, as I said earlier, "Indweller" was the lowest of the low.

But watch out for Phil Jones making a come-back with a brand new Quintessence LP any day now. 35 years down the line, this man's voice can still move mountains, and he has more sense of rhythm in his left eyebrow than most singers have in their entire bodies. None of the other former band members will be appearing, but I understand Phil will be delivering some new songs together with some re-workings of some of the band's old stuff. After all this time, this should really be something to look forward to!

I have started to listen Quintessence quite recently. I have heard bands name earlier, but this summer there came a document from Glastonbury Festival 1971 where they played and that woke my interest. Because there was only one review with one star of this album I decided to make another. In 1972 bands career started to go down. They weren´t satisfied to Island records and refused to go on tour in US, so Chris Blackwell dropped them. They made two albums to RCA, but before "Indweller" recordings band leader Raja Ram fired singer Shiva Shankae Jones and guitar player Maha Dev. It´s not clear who was singing in this their last album.

Starter "Jesus Is My Life" is very funny piece! Maybe they made it seriously, but now it works only a humor song. But direction changes into next one: although "Butterfly Music" is very short, it has really deep atmosphere played by flute, guitar, bass and very gentle drums! It sounds to be from the larger piece, it´s sad they put only so short part of it in this album. "It´s All the Same" is long acoustic song with very warm feeling in it! To me it sounds title piece has taken also from the longer improvisation piece as "Butterfly Music", because it sounds as awesome! "Portable Realm" ends the a-side in acoustic way and has great "late evening"-feeling. "Sai Baba" is mantra song. "Holy Roller" is little bit mediocre song, but has good groove whole through. "On the Other Side Of the Wall" is again very serene and melodic piece with great flute playing. "Dedication" is calm, short acoustic very Indian sounding piece including some mantra. "Bliss Trip" starts with organ, thunder sounds and gong. Soon comes very meditative flute. In the middle there comes beautiful sounding vipraphone. Very holy atmosphere continues whole over six minutes. "Mother Of the Universe" ends album as cheerful way as it starts, it seems to include again some mantra.

I have listened now only once their all albums, but really going to listen them again. I have given four stars to everyone. To me this albums sounds as great as those others. Quintessence was from the begin very spiritual taken influences specially from eastern religions, so if that´s too much for you, you´re not liking this or their any other albums. I haven´t got anything against those philosophies, but it´s the music that I love in this band! Still I don ´t think they made any masterpieces, in every album there are empty moments here and there. Anyway you hear very rare this kind of music these days.