IKARUS

In my never-ending pursuit of little known prog rock albums, here's another one worth checking in to. This German band (not to be confused with any other band called IKARUS, like the one who released Touch the Sun) released this one and only album in 1971. Often regarded as one of the first progressive jazz-rock albums to come out of Germany, to me, the music is actually simply progressive, but does have lots of great sax work (from Jochen Petersen). Because of the presences of sax, as well as Hammond organ, the comparisons to VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR can't be avoided. But unlike VdGG, the band also included strings on a couple of the cuts, and there's some Krautrock tendencies included (the occasional spacy passages remind me a little of TANGERINE DREAM's "Alpha Centauri").

But the one thing the band isn't so great on are the lyrics. It sounds like they had problems grasping the English language, so the first song, expressing the band's concerns for the environment ended up writing lyrics that literally go: "Save the nature/It's a treasure". That has got to be some of the worst lyrics I have ever heard, and it's too bad it has to be a song protesting environmental destruction. The rest of the album features more or less lyrics that make little sense, except for one song using a poem from Edgar Allen Poe. Lyrics aside, this album demonstrates all that's great of early '70s prog rock, and if you like that stuff, get yourself this album.