Passport - Passport - Handmade - Looking Through - Cross Collateral - Infinity Machine (Germany 1971-1976) -

An Uncle Roddus Album Review

This is the other 5 CD budget reissue set that I scored from The Warehouse the other week along with the X box set. This was a great score as I was surprised to see this stuff here, although these CDs are still available on Amazon. Again, this set consists of this groups first 5 proper albums and consists of what is probably their strongest material, no giving us one or two classics and then fobbing us off with some other crap they released later in their career.

Although I reviewed the debut album below separately, I will just touch upon the rest briefly in one statement as lack of time and so many other albums to review is preventing me from giving these individual attention.
I like the first album the best, but the rest of these are close behind and the music is consistently good across the whole bunch. They stick pretty much to the same style over all four releases but it doesn't get too repetitive, as there is plenty of experimentation within the context they set them selves. Overall rating 4/5.

As usual, blogger didn't load the scans in the order I wanted so the first album is a the bottom of the post and I can't be bothered to get them in the right order.

This first album from 1971 is the one that got me interested in this German Prog/funk/jazz fusion group and the opening track "Uranus" is worth the asking price of the whole box set itself with the brilliant sax rif from the leader of this ensemble, Klaus Doldinger. The atmospheric sax intro on track 2 sounds familiar to me from the Audience album "House On The Hill". I wonder who borrowed from who? This whole set is just chock full of excellent sax blowing across these instrumental tracks and should impress most fusion fans and may appeal also to Deodato fans. Rating 4.5/5.