Ellufant - "Release Concert" {Netherlands} [1972] (Psych Prog Rock)

Ellufant's Release Concert has to be one of the weirdest Dutch obscurities, belonging less to the symphonic-influenced group of bands that would come later in the 70s and more to the psychedelic underground where bands like Ahora Mazda, Dennis and Ame Son reside. For 1972, Release Concert is a pretty dated album, with those late 60s organ and super wahed/fuzzed out guitar tones rambling on improvisationally. Ellufant mixed up this run of the mill, Iron Butterfly-like jamming by altering their tones, substantially at times, sometimes creating noises that sound like they originated from electronic equipment of years later. While some of these improvisations are occasionally interesting, they don't hold up too much over a full-length album, particularly because the music backing up the tonal manipulation varies very little. Surely, Soft Machine was an influence here at least in terms of the keyboards, although Ellufant don't have close to their level of chops. Not really a whole lot to say - plenty of reverb, mostly unexciting jamming, with only a bit of weird tone-tweaking to make it a bit better than average. Some obscurities were meant to be.(Mike McLatchey@Gnosis)

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