Pan Nowogród Wielki

Pan & Regaliz's sole album has finally been released on CD and the artwork sleeve is trying to match as much as possible the original although this is a digipack release. Having had to change name, label and drummer (Belgian Peter Van Eeckhout replacing Santiago "Jackie" Garcia), P&R settled in the studio to record a few tracks - they had released two singles before, which tracks would end up on the album - and what a fine gem it is for psych/proto prog fans.
Made up of five short tracks, the first side of the vinyl sticks very close to a bluesy/jazzy/psych-rock, which is very reminiscent of Jethro Tull's debut album. Highlights are the opening One More Day, Monsters's Garden and instrumental Thinking In Mary (somehow close to Serenade To A Cuckoo on Tull's debut), but unfortunately a rare out of context track (but thankfully short) closes that side…

The sole, eponymous album of this great progressive band was released in May 1970 by the Danish Sonet Records as a pressing of just 1000 copies. The music of Pan was an ambitious mixture of heavy rock sounds with folk, jazz and classical music and was characterized by great English (and some French) vocals from Robert Lelievre (who sadly committed suicide in 1973), fluid tasteful guitar parts, atmospheric Hammond phrases and loose, but solid rhythm section. This tightly arranged and beautifully produced LP is now regarded as one of the very best rock albums ever recorded in Denmark.

Robb Weir is never a man to take what he has for granted. Having led TYGERS OF PAN TANG since their first album through a number of line-up changes, he recognises that the current Tygers are probably the strongest since they were at the forefront of the NWOBHM. The original band, who made four albums for MCA Records, survived the unexpected departure of Jess Cox to run Neat Records and later John Sykes, who was bound for Thin Lizzy and a multi-million seller with Whitesnake. What they didn’t survive was their greatest commercial success with the album “The Cage”. Now the band are all set for the release of their new album, “Bloodlines”.