FRUMPY 2

With this second album, Frumpy strikes big and even bigger. Already, the debut album having sold in respectable amounts (partly due to their superb gimmix cover, this fully unfoldable round plastic artwork was even more impressive, but here the music on the wax slice was altogether more satisfying than on their previous effort. One must say that now Frumpy is a quintet , and Key-man JJ Kravetz gets a very helpful hand from newcoming guitarist Rainer Baumann. The sound is much more even and fuller, allows more less repetition and the solos are thankfully shorter.

Only four tracks on here ranging from 7:30 to 12 min+ and a more dramatic feel with Rumpf's impressive (but not always very feminine - in a positive way) vocals, a still dominating organ (Kravetz was not give room that easy) and a lyrical guitar, the whole thing underlined by Carsten Bohn' excellent drumming. In early 70's Germany, Frumpy were close to the top in every musician polls with Kraan. With a relative basic (compared to what's coming up) riff, Good Winds is an annunciation of things to come, but clearly a poor (but relative, giving the quality of the whole album) start to an otherwise excellent album. Sometimes sounding like Uriah Heep (Kravetz's play is similar to Hensley in many ways, but he gets more freedom than Ken), this track is interrupted by a quiet church organ-like atmosphere before building slow crescendo returning to the energetic riffing from the start, but it is damn well taking a lot of meanders. The sometimes Spanish-sounding Gypsy Was Born is a full-blown track, that could be considered an epic if it was slightly longer. With passages sometimes reminding of Beatles's Walrus track, Rumpf's vocals sounding like a primal-screaming Lennon.

Opening the second side, is the shorter Illusions, here Rumpf and the band sounds more like Affinity's only album, meaning that the track has also a bluesier and psychier feel. The c entral section is simply a pure joy. The album closes on a real killer-track, the lenghty Duty, where all five shine on a cloudless day, burning holes through your eardrums and frying your mind with their delightfully energetic prog rock.

Kravetz will then leave the group for obscure reasons, but will be back in time halfway in the recording of their third album which is called BTW and has a double KB attack - Erwin Kania, the leader of now defunct but superb Murphy Blend) and somehow destroying the balance of this album. This was to be their last studio album (a posthumous live release will be released), but part of the group will form the more mainstream Atlantis. As far as this album is concerned, this is Frumpy's peak and in this album, they are not to be outdone by any other powerful band.

This is classic rock with subtle progressive touches for friendly & catchy compositions. This second album is perfectly achieved technically speaking, with kick ass guitars, propulsive Hammond Organs and astonishing, powerfully emotional vocals. "Good Winds" starts as a crazy freak'n roll song and continues on a brilliant melodic "trip" with a mesmerizing keyboard demonstration. "Take care of Illusion" is a dense, furious heavy rocking song with solid guitar riffs and a great bluesy soul; It's kinda heavy in a sense ever developped by bands as Uriah Heep, Atomic Rooster..."Duty" is a fragile emotional ballad with high class vocals, gorgeous guitar solos. "How the gipsy was born" reaches the whole album with an absolutely punchy, sensitive heavy rock song. This album is quite charming but I regret the classic rock "radio station" feeling on a few titles. However it remains highly recommended for progressive rock collectors.

4.5 stars. This review goes out to my friend Tom Ozric who took the news of Hugh Hopper's death pretty hard.Tom's a bass player himself and has conversed with Hugh in the past and is obviously a big fan. Keep your chin up buddy ! Most hail this album as FRUMPY's best, the guitar and organ along with Inga's vocals make this one amazing album.This record consists of only four songs.Inga has such a charismatic voice and apparently she had an unbelieveable stage presence. She says herself that she was the first woman to wear leather pants and play electric guitar on stage. I should note that according to the "Gepr" site she won the award for Germany's biggest talent from this newspaper called "FAZ". And FRUMPY was voted Rock band of the year by "Music Express".

"Good Winds" sounds so good early on with those great sounding guitar leads and organ runs as the drums beat away. Vocals and a dreamy FLOYD-like soundscape take over quickly. When the vocals stop the guitar becomes the focus before 3 1/2 minutes, then it calms right down to almost silence. It's building slowly with some nice bass and organ. Vocal melodies join in. Incredible sound ! The guitar starts to light it up 8 minutes in then that dreamy section from earlier returns. Nice. "How The Gypsy Was Born" was apparently their signature song. Organ dominates early. Vocals a minute in. This riff comes and goes. Love the guitar before 3 1/2 minutes. Outstanding ! The tempo picks up after 5 minutes as the guitar and organ lead the way. Vocals return too.Another killer track.

"Take Care Of Illusion" has this intense intro with vocals. It settles before a minute then kicks back in. The vocals are passionate. She's amazing. It settles again as contrasts continue. I like the way it builds with vocals 4 minutes in, then the guitar rips it up. Check out the guitar / vocal interplay around 6 1/2 minutes. "Duty" opens with what sounds like mellotron as reserved vocals join in. A full sound arrives before a minute.The guitar is lighting it up. Some ripping organ follows as drums pound away. The tempo picks up after 3 minutes and then they simply jam until the vocals return before 11 minutes.

This is very close to a 5 star album for me and I highly recommended it.

A heavy German band that initially released albums between 1970 and 1972 (with a posthumous live album in '73), Frumpy played in a hard n' heavy adventurous rock style made very distinctive by the gutsy and (dare I say) ballsy lead vocals of female singer Inga Rumpf! There were a few progressive related bands from the time that were fronted by women, but none could compare to the powerful and distinctly `un-feminine' sound Inga delivered. While their music was heavily dominated by sludgy electric guitar riffs and aggressive Hammond organ, the band also included blues, folk and psychedelic touches, with some brief classical elements too. Their second album, simply titled `2' is easily comparable to Nektar, early Pink Floyd, Uriah Heap, Atomic Rooster and Jane (and maybe even a little bit of Beggars Opera with the classical touches), but Frumpy really do sound like no other band!

With a trippy lyric and a shimmering Earth and Fire quality, album opener `Good Winds' drifts along on toasty warm vibes. The piece is bookended with drowsy acid-folk slide guitar similar to the early Floyd psych albums, especially reminding of David Gilmour's `Fat Old Sun'. A lengthy instrumental middle is a slow-build scorching Hammond organ ripple that spirals deliriously around leaping melodic bass and driving drum-work. Inga's English language vocal throughout is reflective during the verses before roaring to life in an almost Ozzy Osbourne manner for the overwhelming chorus. A very powerful opener with plenty of tasty sounds! `How The Gipsy Was Born' has a plodding muscular heavy groove, but also more of a breezy and cool swing to it with a fun (yet still pretty out- there) lyric and sultry vocal. Thick scratchy organ grinds away over bashing drums and wailing electric guitar soloing. An abrupt call-to-arms fanfare in the middle sees the piece move into an early Eloy and Grobschnitt stomp with swirling violent Hammond tearing shreds all around.

The second side begins with the eclectic `Take Care of Illusion.' With a more eerie dark nightmarish lyric, most of the piece is bombastic and frantic, Inga bellowing brimstone fury over thrashing guitars that cut loose and maniacal Hammond organ rumbling. It surprisingly briefly floats into a more ethereal ambient passage in the middle, almost Egyptian motifs woven throughout the music, before attacking intimidating bluster kicks in again and the band make an infernal addictive racket to end on. Getting the lightest of Mellotron veils and a sombre vocal out of the way at the beginning (but with a quick reprise at the end), `Duty' quickly reveals itself to be a Hammond organ masochists wet dream, just wall to wall with the instrument. Very jammy, up-tempo and relentless, it's also overloaded with acid-fried fuzzy wah-wah guitar that alternates between weeping and assaulting, blitzkrieg drum soloing working up an almighty sweat and chunky galloping slab-like bass, altogether sounding very much in the vein of the early Birth Control albums. Quick little classical themes incorporated in recall the first three LP's by Beggars Opera, plus there's a little light orchestration to bring a sweeping grandness.

Fans of the above mentioned bands and those wanting to hear a very distinctive female vocalist should look into this group right away, and ideally fans that liked the tougher female singers of bands such as Sandrose and Ruphus will definitely be interested to hear this album. Lovers of the dirtier and less-fancy German bands, and just maybe even Krautrock fans, and those who dig Hammond soaked early prog rockers, will likely find much plenty to appeal here as well. Full of fire, intensity and kick-ass playing from a red-hot band, Frumpy's `2' is a damn fine German prog- related rock album.

Four stars.

Note: Cheers to my good buddy Tom Ozric who pointed out to me just after I bought the CD that the singer of Frumpy wasn't a fella! See, pays to look at the CD booklet before pressing `Play'!

Frumpy were a German heavy psych band in the vein of early Deep Purple and the like; by the time this second album came out, this sort of rough and ready style was already beginning to fade in popularity next to more polished efforts by the likes of Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath or, for that matter, Machine Head-era Deep Purple; nonetheless, despite sounding a bit like they're using second-hand production standards from a few years previous Frumpy manage to make up for this with enthusiastic playing and a raw, dirty sound which makes this an enjoyable product from the fading of the first psychedelic peak era. To paraphase one of my favourite MST3K episodes: "Frumpy, you can do magic things!"

Frumpy´s second album was released in 1971 and showed a band expanding to a quintet with guitarist Rainer Baumann joining the group prior to the recording of this disc. The songs were following the same formula as before although the arrangements are a tad more sophisticated than on their debut, with Baumann adding some nice flourishes most of the time, even if it is clearly that keyboardist Jean-Jacques Kravetz pretty much runs the show with his heavy organ riffing. It is also nice to see that vocalist Inga Rumpf is also singing better than ever, her powerful bluesy delivering is surely one of the highlights of the band.

With hindsight is very easy to see why the band was so popular at home but could not break in England or the USA. While Frumpy proved capable of playing a kind of heavy, organ drenched blues rock as good as any of their british or american counterparts, the band was unable to add anything new to the basic format, unlike many of their german peers who were much more bold and experimental. Not that the band were not capable of doing something different: Kravetz sometimes threw a few interesting melodic lines during the instrumental breaks (like in Duty), but it was all too timid, short and retrieved. Most of the time you could not tell them from another british band of the genre. In other words, they lacked a strong musical personality that would set them apart from so many others. In Germany their skilled raw blues rock delivering could be a novelty but elsewhere it was not.

That´s not to say that the songs were bad, on the contrary: they were very good and all band members were excellent. However, this kind of music was waning fast, with most bands becoming more sophisticated and eclectic (like Deep Purple) or simply disappearing from the scene (like Iron Butterfly). Frumpy was in danger of becoming obsolete before they could hit the big time in international terms. And the leaving of Kravetz soon after this album was out would only worse matters.

But they did deliver a fine hard/blues rock album that is a joy to hear. Maybe more enjoyable nowadays than it was then. If you like the bands in the vein of Deep Purple mark I, Atomic Rooster or Colosseum, you should not miss this one.

Rating: 3,5 stars.