All India Radio Embryo Músico

"Father, Son And Holy Ghosts" was the title of Embryo's third LP. A title which wasn't meant at all religiously, but ironically: It was intended as to pull a leg to the so-called "Holy trinity": The comparatively old Mal Waldron figured as "father" (the band's foster-father so to speak), Embryo was thought of as 'son', and with "holy ghosts" they meant their ideas. The great Siegfried Schwab convinces on guitar, veena and tarang, bringing the sounds of India with him. The additional track (20 minutes) with great violin is a soundboard recording taken from the "3rd Essener Pop & Blues Festival" in 1970, which never had been released before. The thick booklet comes with large story, discography, cover and label repros and many photographs. Progressive jazz-rock, mostly instrumental.

New to the catalogue, delightful chamber music by an Italian celebrity of 18th-century London.

Neatly recorded in February 1976, it was released on LP in 1977, but has not yet appeared as CD. The gig had taken place in a town near Munich. The album features the jazz-rock typical of Embryo, influenced by ethnic music, with scarce vocals and some unusual instruments like marimba, dilruba, oud, and nagasuram. Christian Burchard and Roman Bunka wrote most of the songs together. Only "The orange man" was written by Charlie Mariano. The long CD bonus track "Just arrived" was recorded in Northern Italy on March 6th, 1976, by the very same Embryo line-up and was as yet unreleased. The cover was then designed by Roman Bunka and was used for the CD without any changes.

"Bad Heads And Bad Cats", recorded in the autumn of 1975, was released in 1976 as the eighth LP of the Munich band Embryo. It was also their first album on April, their newly founded independent distribution and label. According to drummer Christian Burchard, it is one of Embryo's best LPs. Due to its jazz focus, however, it might be too unwieldy for some listeners. The first of the two bonus tracks was recorded in the Stommeln Dierks studio in 1975, together with the other LP tracks, and couldn't be placed on the album for a lack of space. The second one was recorded at the first Vlotho festival on June 28th, 1975, and was first released on the "Open Air Concert Vlotho-Winterberg" LP. Again all tracks were written by the Embryo members themselves.

Progressive rock provides the framework but jazz-rock gives the flavor to this powerfully seductive album-length workout, four extended numbers (on which the vocals who are present are buried so far down in the mix that these are essentially instrumentals) that surge forth with saxophone solos and keyboard runs to rival the best-known English and U.S. prog rock bands - and Christian Burchard's myriad percussion sounds (outdoing even his keyboard timbres at times) are in a class of their own. The difference between Embryo and their English-speaking rivals is that Embryo are content to take their time, even compared with acts such as King Crimson, getting where they're going, and don't mind going in long, extended detours into the funkier side of jazz…