Fit & Limo stammen aus der bayerischen Provinz. "The serpent unrolled" ist jedoch gänzlich von Provinzialität befreit. Ihr Verständnis von mystischen, weltumspannenden Folk weist sie als Soundalchimisten aus, die als Ausdruck ihrer Schrägsicht der Welt, sich einfach treiben ließen. Ihr psychedelisch angehauchter Acid Folk, hat viel 60's Feeling. Ruhig, fließend, einlullend, sind die vierzehn Titel (u.a. zwei Coverversionen: "Images of April" von Tom Rapp und der all-time Klassiker "Dark star" von Grateful Dead) wie ein entspannter Trip, auf emotionale Ausbrüche wartet man aber vergebens. Die inhaltliche Gelassenheit, kommt durch die vielen akustischen Instrumente zustande, die eine gehörige Portion Ruhe ausstrahlen. Indische Einflüsse, britischer und amerikanischer Folk, verschiedenartige Klänge, all dies zusammen bildet eine homogene Einheit, bei der aber irgendwie aufgrund der allumspannenden Trägheit einfach der letzte Funken nicht überspringen will. Übrigens: neben der CD gibt es übrigens auch eine auf 400 Kopien limitierte LP.

(Kristian Selm, © Progressive Newsletter 1998)

With apologies to the sons and daughters of La Monte Young, I reckon that linearity will only get you so far. The practitioners of acid-folk tend to draw wiggly lines off into mysterious woods, and I thought I´d follow a few to see where they lead. Fit&Limo are an acoustic duo from Bavaria comprising Stefan Limo Lienemann (previously in the Shiny Gnomes) and his female compatriot, who is known to the world only as Mrs. Fit. Ill-advised monikers aside, The Serpent Unrolled is their first full-length release since Autre Monde in 1995, and it was worth the wait. In fact if you have that previous outing, the serpent is probably already unrolling around your turntable or inside your disc player and your are consequently probably in some far off place and not reading this at all. You always hear folks bemoaning the lack of current music that can stand up in the company of visionary works by The Incredible String Band, Pearls Before Swine, Third Ear Band, COB, Caedmon, Mellow Candle and the like. Fit&Limo create acid folk masterpieces that set the controls for the heart of the genre and end up with it glowing in their hands. The 14 tracks are a riot of pan-psychedelic instrumentation with Fit doing mostly keys and percussion duty (glockenspiel, autoharp, harmonium, metallophone, xylophone, toy piano and many more) and Limo doing the string-driven stuff (guitar, sitar, mandolin and so on). Plenty of swapping around of duties goes on though, with instruments flying between the two like enchanted emissaries. But what matters more than the musicology of it is the extraordinarily beautiful sonic spells that are cast with these tools. Twelve near-perfect originals are delivered, exquisite as the moment when a droplet of water on a leaf decides to fall to earth. You could pick anything, but allow me to direct you to the courtly medieval beauty of Born In The Eleventh Month, or the Byzantine ISB complexity Walking The Labyrinth for supporting evidence of greatness. Based on what they have achieved with their originals, no-one has more right to weigh in with covers of the Grateful Dead´s Dark Star and Tom Rapp´s Images Of April, and the versions here are illuminated with grace, easily matching their excellent cover of Rapp´s Surrealist Waltz on the For The Dead In Space tribute album.

(Ptolemaic Terrascope, UK)

Three years have passed since Fit & Limo's last real album ("Autre Monde", 1995), now the public is permitted another earful of their sound alchemy. The serpent has unrolled and the muses are smiling. Numerous well-known and strange instruments (new ones like church organ, Veeh-harp and xylophone complement the usual Fit & Limo suspects, such as violin, autoharp, sitar, mandolin, glockenspiel, piano, clay drums, bongos etc.) pair up with nursery rhymes and cryptic messages. Beyond the "traumtür" lies a medieval fairytale world of cranes and toads, basilisks and lions, spirals and stones, dew and cauldrons. A labyrinth of sounds, noises, and harmonies unfolds. Fit & Limo playfully celebrate their unique mystic folk­ incorporating elements of American acid/Middle Eastern/Celtic/British (Incredible String Band, Caedmon) folk­ on the way to the third millennium. Beside twelve originals "The Serpent Unrolled" contains two cover versions: Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" and "Images of April" by Tom Rapp / Pearls Before Swine (Fit & Limo already covered a PBS song, "Surrealist Waltz," for the Tom Rapp tribute compilation "For the dead in space"). Male/female duo Limo & Mrs. Fit are based in Altdorf (Bavaria, Germany). Stefan "Limo" Lienemann's (ex-Shiny Gnomes) current solo-project is the experimental/Kraut/space/drone/folk band Discolor, he also recently collaborated with "Cosmic Gardener" Riff on the "Fim Froil" album.

(www.septembergurlsrecords.com)