domenica 4 maggio 2014

Nosferatu - Nosferatu 1970

Named after the vampire from the early expressionist film, Nosferatu were one of the earliest groups from Germany to explore beyond the conventional beat music and blues into the far more progressive realms of Krautrock in the late 1960s. The group is also one of the most obscure Krautrock bands, with only one record to their name.

The 1968 students riots in Paris were the spark for several groups of musicians, in both France and Germany, and that event marks the starting point of the earliest Krautrock bands, among them Can, Xhol Caravan, and others, including Nosferatu. One early member was guitarist Michael Winzkowski, who later went on to the better-known prog-rock band Epsilon in 1970. The group's music still owed some debt to more conventional British rock and earlier beat bands, but also saw the group adventuring out on longer compositions and some fusion elements, and their music was imbued with that dark Teutonic angst that often distinguishes Krautrock from other rock music of that era.

In 1970 Nosferatu recorded their one and only self-titled album, which was released by the French label Vogue in both France and Germany. At this time the band consisted of vocalist Michael Thierfelder, sax and flute player Christian Felke, bassist Michael Kessler, organist Reinhard Grohe, guitarist Michael Meixner, and drummer Byally Braumann. Since Vogue wasn't a label normally associated with Krautrock, record sales languished and the group disbanded the next year when Felke joined Winzkowski in Epsilon. The rare LP has since become one of the more pricey items on the collector's circuit, with mint copies fetching the equivalent of $500 or more. In 1993 the album was released on CD by Ohrwaschl. Biography by Rolf Semprebon allmusic.com

Tracklist:
01.Highway 4.16
02.Willie The Fox 10.48
03.Found My Home 8.48
04.No. 4 8.48
05.Work Day 6.59
06.Vanity Fair 6.44

Nosferatu:
Michael Thierfelder -Vocals
Christian Felke - Flute, Sax
Michael Kessler - Bass
Michael Meixner - Guitar
Reinhard Grote - Organ
Byally Braumann - Drums

5 commenti:

  1. Nosferatu is an early Krautrock album containing a heavy and raw progressive sound tainted with psychedelic elements engineered by the legendary Konrad Plank. Dominated by guitar, organ and sax, this album also contains excellent flute work and percussion. As a whole, the album has its ups and downs. A few tracks offer up some trippy grooves, but the group tends to lean towards an Anglo-American approach and the lyrics in English would have been better has they been in German. Terribly much is not about to get out Nosferatu. The group called itself probably originally The details before you renamed in 1968 in Nosferatu. At that time still belonged to Michael Winzkowski the band, the short handle later at Orange Peel and then at Epsilon in the strings before he held Michael Wynn later launched a solo career. In 1970 when Nosferatu grossed only album, he was no longer there.

    Nosferatu was the sextet from Michael Thierfelder (vocals), Michael Kessler (bass), Reinhard Grohe (organ), Michael Meixner (guitar), Byally Braumann (drums) and Christian Felke (flute, sax). The band caught the attention of producer Tony Hendrik, who produced the first and only album of the band for the French label Vogue, which appeared in 1970.

    The so called “beat competitions” were particularly popular, since no or only a little fee was paid and the winning band was chosen by the audience. One of these bands with a very particular concept was ‘Nosferatu’ - the name referring to expressionistic film-making in the 1930ies rather than vampires. Their second place of the afore mentioned beat competitions (organized by Peter Hauke) got them a record contract that resulted in the album at hand. Tony Hendrik, music producer from Cologne, who was part of the audience at the beat competition, was so impressed that he signed them on right away.

    Once the record had been released, gigs all over Germany followed - open-air gigs in Wasserburg, Frankfurt and Kassel, as supporting act for ‘Steamhammer’ and ‘Humble Pie’. But like many other bands of the time, Nosferatu eventually failed to remain successful nationwide. The atmosphere was extremely tense, and artists anywhere were preoccupied with the social influences from the hippie movement, esotericism, the squatting scene and APO. In contrast, terms like management, promotional concepts and continuous work on the band were hardly internalized. Competing bands appearing in charts, clubs and on TV were commercially successful and set the bar too high for experimental music, so eventually the band split up two years after releasing this album.

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  2. Together with guitarist Lutz Sommer (later with ‘Papa Zoot Band’ and ‘Beatles Revival Band’ and Georg Viel (later with ‘Frankfurt City Blues), Felke, Kessler and Thierfelder went on to found the band ‘Samia’, which was not granted success either.

    Mick Thierfelder turned to jazz and played with the Michael Sagmeister band as well as in the trio “Frey, Tiepolt, Thierfelder”, before joining the ‘Hired Help Band’ (Funk & Soul). Today he works as a designer in Munich.

    Christian Felke played with ‘Epsilon’, managed to become a professional musician and participated in many musical projects as flutist and saxophone player (for example Klaus Lage Band, Rainhard Fendrich’s accompanying band, Zöller Band, Caro etc.) He had a big commercial success with the “Zillertaler Schürzenjäger”. Currently he is involved in several musical projects (such as “Chilly” and “Sound & Gebläse”).

    Their drummer Byally Braumann died in the mid 70s from a shock he suffered by touching the electric guitar and a lamp at the same time. Unfortunately, Michael Kessler and Tammy Grohé died also much too early.
    Michael Meixner became the co-founder of the hard rock cafe in Frankfurt in 1978.

    Nosferatu is an early Krautrock album containing a heavy and raw progressive sound tainted with psychedelic elements engineered by the legendary Conny Plank. Dominated by guitar, organ and sax, this album also contains excellent flute work and percussion. As a whole, the album has its ups and downs. A few tracks offer up some trippy grooves, but the group tends to lean towards an Anglo-American approach and the lyrics in English would have been better has they been in German. In spite of the obvious Anglo influence, the group does manage to create a unique sound. This can be attributed to some unusual riffs and rhythms as well as the amount of sax and flute versus organ.

    A now and still squinting after the 60s, organ-heavy Protoprog play Nosferatu on their self-titled debut. On Blue base is here mostly earthy, almost rocked hard, but sweeps the music again and again into jazzy, psychedelic and also classical progressive realms. Always particularly if they are Christian Felke sets on saxophone and flute in the music scene is interesting and sets it apart from the typical contemporary mainstream rock. Most likely, the music can be comfortable with the comparison, the Munich formation Out Of Focus has made on their first two albums.

    Noteworthy are the effect alienation saxophone Felkes deposits, in particular its distorted in the middle part of "Willie The Fox". Michael Thierfelder singing is very neat, largely without an accent and easily fits quite well affected to the expressive music. It's behavior experimentally in to "No. 4" the piece is an exciting blend of Floyd digger psychedelia, echoing piano deposits, roaring electric guitars digressions gem drumming, virtuoso saxophone lines, angular jazz rock and some lyrical passages dar. Also "Work Day" offers a similar blending of jazz-rock, psychedelia and hard rock, only that here comes a formative Flute it. “Vanity Fair” contains a couple of African- Latin American elements, taking the album to a grand finale.

    The album ''Nosferatu'' is a relatively obscure album with early, but quite mature (proto) prog from Germany, which looks great in any intent on completeness Krautrock collection.
    Supplement: CD-Reissue in 2010 by Long Hair Music LHC93 on CD and LP!,and by Second Battle SB LP 051

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