Erotiki Teleti (1979)

Muck Groh was born in 1946 and started his musical life by first learning the trombone before he became more known as a guitarist, first band he was featured in being the the krautrock band Ihre Kinder. Later on he founded Aera which mixed jazz and progressive rock and which he left in the 70's to pursue more solo projects, like his album "Muckefuck" (it is a German word for bad coffee) and another jazz rock group Grotesk. Besides a rich music career, Groh spent much of his time as a freelance painter until 2006 where he initiated a revival of Aera called Neue Aera with which he tours regularly. Groh's musical endeavors can therefore be checked in bands mentioned above while his only solo album in 1979 is a fine record with folk overtones that might also please fans of Frank Zappa's jazz rock oriented albums.

Efendi's Garden was - despite of their exotic musical sound - a band from Hannover. Founder Wolfgang Krantz formerly played with the bands called Jane and Harlis, then he took a year off, to make a terrific return in 1979 with Efendi's Garden. Activated by the former bandmember of Jane, Klaus Hess, as well as bassplayer Frank Meier, drummer Wolfgang Schreiner, Saxophone player Heinz Alberding and the uncommon singer Thomas Stender, Krantz presented a collective which had to search one's own kind in former musical aera of West Germany. Arabian singing, amplified by a megaphone, between shrill and hypnotic but always very intensive joining the slick arranged music. Partly like a soft ballade then again hardrock sound á la best Jane-tradition - even disco elements (it was the big disco fever at that time) are to be heard and are integrated into the musical concept…

Aera originated from Nürnberg, with roots going back to the late 1960. Although related to Ihre Kinder, Aera were always more of that great tradition of Bavarian/South German jazz-rock. One could compare them to other such bands as: Embryo, Missus Beastly, Munju, Moira, etc. Whilst fronted by Muck Groh they recorded two albums that were as much Krautrock as jazz-rock, with multi-tracked guitar riffing and near on ever-present wind solos, plus violin and ex Wind drummer Lucky Schmidt on their second. After that they got jazzier, due to big changes in personnel, with wheelchair-bound saxophonist Klaus Kreuzeder taking over as leader. Further albums diversified, with Roman Bunka from Embryo joining for a while, before they returned to the patent Aera Kraut-fusion style.

After 20 years of having their heads fused together in their signature double-noggin logo, Death From Above 1979’s Sebastien Grainger and Jesse Keeler can now say they officially share the same brain. As the Toronto-bred duo explain to Apple Music, the decision to self-produce their fourth album, Is 4 Lovers, wasn’t so much driven by a desire to get back to the DIY conditions that spawned their debut 2004 disco-metal classic You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine. Rather, it was an attempt to apply all the studio knowledge they’ve accumulated in the interim working with A-list producers like Dave Sardy (on 2014’s The Physical World) and Eric Valentine (2017’s Outrage! Is Now) and use it to elevate Grainger and Keeler’s long-standing psychic connection into a full-on mind-meld.

Among so many other great landmarks in the history of rock & roll, the late ‘60s witnessed numerous technological advances when it came to recording and performing equipment, and, thanks in no small part to the emergence of Marshall amplifiers, the decade also gave rise to the era of hard rock and heavy metal. Power trios such as Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and the deafening Blue Cheer provided the initial thrust, but once the subsequent holy trinity of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and Black Sabbath burst onto the scene, the hard rock virus really spread like a plague across the globe – even into distant, chilly, staid Norway, from whence came the aptly named Titanic…