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.

Family of Percussion & Guests in the fabulous Sunday Palaver (Germany 1980)

Peter Giger et cie. made a handful of records of which this third from 1980 is the most accessible, in my view.  Note the presence of progressive luminary Wolfgang Dauner (perhaps that word is insufficient, let's refer to him as German artistic genius with the golden Midas touch, every album he was involved in such as the Et Cetera band turned to musical gold).  But let's not ignore Peter Giger, of Dzyan and subsequently Giger Lenz Maron fame, and Sax player Alan Skidmore (Soft Machine connection there), plus the great Trilok Gurtu.  (The last and least known members Doug Hammond and Tom Nicholas were percussionists as well.)  I guess these all-percussion albums were another odd trend of this progressive period in time, I doubt many such are being made today anymore.

Check the prestidigitation of all sixty fingers from 6 humans in this track:

Amazing?  Unfortunately their other records are not quite as good, with a surfeit of the percussion to which their name is all too deeply indebted.  The first in particular, wherein the band name appears as album title, was all improvised, and mostly drumming.
But thanks to my friend for introducing this little jewel which I would otherwise have eschewed.