We Keep On is the German art/jazz rock band Embryo's most successful
recording. It's also one of their best. In late 1972, saxophonist Charlie
Mariano joined Embryo along with guitarist Roman Bunka. Mariano's already
encyclopedic knowledge of world music forms was a welcome addition to
the band; they sought to fuse jazz and space rock -- à la their
countrymen Can -- with the various rhythms and harmonic sensibilities
of folk musics across the globe. Bunka also played the Turkish saz and
was a great, if unconventional, vocalist. Embryo's leader, Christian Burchard,
took up everything from drums to marimba to Mellotron on this set to complement
pianist Dieter Miekautsch's Rhodes and clavinet work. And Mariano played
not only sax and flute but nagasuram and bamboo flutes as well. Here,
on "Ehna, Ehna, Abu Lele," West African rhythms danced with
jazz rock and wove something entirely new from the roots of both. On "Hackbrett-Dance,"
saz, marimba, and percussion became something out of time and space that
might have come from any North African nation, but found a place in the
tripped-out world of psychedelic space music as well -- check the recordings
of Angus MacLise for a frame of reference here. But it is on the Miles-influenced
jazz-funk of "No Place to Go," which used the Jack Johnson groove
to achieve new rock ecstasies, that the album really comes into view for
its revolutionary contribution to the language of assimilation. The CD
version also contains two welcome bonus tracks from the session, a nearly
16-minute "Ticket to India" and an eight-and-a-half-minute extended
improv called "Flute, Saz and Marimba" that could have come
from one of Don Cherry's early-'70s recordings. Highly recommended.
(by Thom Jurek, All
Music Guide)
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