Family of Percussion's Moon at Noon [with Albert Mangelsdorff and Wolfgang Dauner, from 1987]

When I noticed the involvement of those other two luminaries of the German fusion-jazz scene on this LP, Mangelsdorff and of course our beloved Dauner, the great great Wolfgang Dauner (all he touched turned to gold), I had to get this one to complete the series.  In past comments I noted that throughout their 5 records, there is a little too much free and too little composition to grind our molars on and satisfy that aching appetite for compositional complexity that gets us going-- with the exception of the Sunday Palaver posted before.  And here too tracks tend to drag on too long, moreover, they are repeat performances of past hits like Dauner's fabulous Trans Tanz (which was on the previous post too, but originally on Changes, absolutely a masterpiece and a half of keyboard prog).  3/5 of the trax are written by the great Mangelsdorff, who is usually a bandleader, but plays trombone by day.  His career stretched all the way back to the sixties, but if I recall correctly, I found most of his output as leader to be too improvised and free to my taste.  One composition is by Trilok, of course, and is really a percussion plus keyboards swingin' number.

In my opinion the most interesting track especially with its eerie muted trombone (?) opener, is the last one, Für E.W. (by Mangelsdorff), closing out the LP with a reflective or meditational exercise in thoughtful shifting scales and surf-like cymbals...





Amazing?
And isn't the drawing on the vinyl beautiful?  And so seventies-- oh wait, this is 1987.  Doesn't matter, unlike the previous two posts, with this record we feel we are back in those groovy seventies again when there was oh so much hope for the future-- and music.
Not so much now.