late 60s psych-pop from Eastern Europe

anyways, eastern european (especially polish and c jazz, psych and prog have been really hot for a while now w/psych and funk collectors.

some names Pugh Rogefeldt (sampled on dj shadow's first record), Breakout, Novi Singers, and a bunch of comps - Prog is Not a Four Letter Word, Folk is not a Four Letter Word, Cherrystones Rocks, Trap Door, etc.

Excellent funky work from the 70s Hungarian scene -- and a real standout in the catalog of power combo Syrius! The group's a heavy electric jazz ensemble, with touches of the jazz/rock sound that other eastern European groups were using at the time -- especially on the vocals that come through on some of the tracks on the set. The instrumentation's the real strong point, though -- nice and soulful, with some very tight drums, good rolling basslines, and tasty keyboard work that steps along at a quick fusion-inspired pace. Titles include the great instrumental "The Fever", plus "Where Is The Man", "Song At Dawn", "Where Could I Go?", "Yeah, That Was Nice", and "I'm Stretching Out My Arms". CD also features 3 bonus tracks -- "Csendes Kialltas", "Ha Meghallod Ezt A Dalt", and "Szep Az Elet".

i love how dusty groove reviews are so recognizable

That train station looks right out of the Eastern Bloc chapter of If On A Winter's Night A Traveler.

The second part, Szettort Almok, was recorded live in Hungary in 1970. I've seen a solo album of this name around, so this must be a live performance of that recording. It's a little similar to Colosseum in tone, with the two saxophones prominent with non-synth keyboards (there are no electric lead guitars here). Despite a few production problems, it's a serious piece of music with Hungarian lyrics of somewhat gothic overtones (something about vampires?) and should have appeal for followers of progressive music.This performance comes in at around 35 minutes.

The title track is also a live recording from Budapest, in 1972. It's a little more avant-garde: the performance stops and starts and includes dialogue between the players every now and then amidst some Robert Wyatt-like grooves. It takes the overall runnning time to around 70 minutes.

Syrius's bassist, Jackie Orszaczky, returned to Oz and played with Bakery (whose vocalist was invited to join Frank Zappa but couldn't get a green card), then made what was probably the most sophisticated Australian jazz-fusion record of its day, Beramiada, on Real Records (1975). It featured a session drummer, Graham Morgan, who had played with Jade Warrior during the Island years, keyboardist Peter Jones, who had recorded with Mackenzie Theory and now has some solo recordings, and guitarist John Robinson (formerly with Fraternity and Blackfeather). Orszaczky later made a name for himself as a producer (eg The Whitlams) and is still performing and recording in Australia and Hungary.

Syrius's approach to recording is a little relaxed, so don't expect wonderful production values. I'd give the first recording 4 stars, the second 31/2 (less for some fade-outs in performance).A note on the cover art too: the illustration has a surrealistic bent and in a style more common to heavy metal. An article is included in Hungarian.

http://www.hungaroton.hu/pop/info.php?info=183&vez=h

(Track 8 is that beautiful one on Pepperisms.)

Whenever I go back to "the motherland" (Poland) I come back with stacks of great LPs, though more people are selling them on eBay now and they're getting harder to find. The psych/pop/freakbeat stuff was always very melodic and a lot of it had some trad melodies snuck in that made the shit just so, I dunno, catchy.

Me, I loves it!

(I'm Pfunk's friend)

wow, i had pictured that looking completely different.

Jester's Bread

A king is above, a jester below,
People all around with matters,
Jester is come to chase them,
He got his prize ("bread" in Hungarian) for his service.

His old name has been forgotten,
His old mind has been lost,
That's why he's jumping with a tinkler in his neck,
The Matter laughs at him, and going to be a Jest

The king is great, and the people are afraid,
Only the jester do the things like he talks,
He sleeps the night, but he knows by day,
The fools are plenty, the thrones are rare.

Statue is above, a flower on the ground,
Good monkeys give it to the jester,
The sands are running out, the statue will fall,
But from that flower new flowers will born.

then click "meghallgatás"

Would it be fair to say that Omega (and bands like them) represented youthful, artistic rebellion, defiance, anger, and political opposition in Hungary the way the Tropicalistas did in Brazil? this would be around the same time, no? Maybe you could describe for us the political and social environment in which this music was created? what other bands were this bold? were musicians and artists commonly imprisoned (or even worse!) for speaking out against the government?

i hope i'm not asking too many questions. i am just very interested in the global landscape during this particular era.

In fact, OMEGA was a so-called "official" band at that time. They started in 1962 as a privileged band (it means that they had rich parents, they could buy their stuff from western countries, etc.). They have never been a protest-group, simply because they were the part of socialist rock businness. They could travel all around the world (don't forget at that time a simple Hungarian citizen could get to a Western country in every FIFTH years, with 50 bucks in your pocket...) But it doesn'n mean that they were communists, of course.
Between 1976 and 1984 we got real "bold" hard rock bands, like P.Mobil, Hobo Blues Band and especially Beatrice. They critized the communist regime, so they could not publish any records for a long time. When they got the licence sometimes they had to change lyrics. P. Mobil and Hobo Blues Band were traditionally blues-rock bands, while Beatrice closer to punk music. Their performance was a real scandal in Hungary at that time. (Of course we like them very much...)
Yes, some musicians commonly imprisoned, but only in the 80s. I remember CPG - the first real, wild punk band in Hungary - they were singing songs against communism, then after 3 or 4 gigs the government imprisoned the whole band. It was clearly politics and the first time that you could hear about Hungarian undergrand music.
Dear Shaky, you've right, cultural censorship was already cracking by the last 60s. I mean the wild censorship, because the official controll remained the part of the system until 1990. The 1956 revolution was a real tragedy because everyone knew exactly there's no way to start again. It means, for example, that my family and me (I was born in 1970) could not believe our life without communism because we could see a strong, undefeated empire against us. My father was a freedom fighter in 1956, we have suffered a lot from communists. He always told me: "no chance without Russian opposition, because we are alone..", of course this was true, but I repeat myself, we could not imagine the fall of communism. Only the musicians, actors, directors could do anything, giving their paralells, phrases, ambiguous messages.

could you recommend some of this polish stuff you've been finding? someone mentioned czerwone gitary, but from what i remember from listening to my parents' record way back in the day, they did much more kinks-y pop... what's some good polish stuff in a more psych/kraut vein?

Yeah, the whole freakbeat/beat/Kinksy stuff was so huge in Poland. Not that much totally tripped out stuff, but I think there was a lot of cool and even strange stuff snuck into the seemingly tame and mainstream pop of the day. With official censorship, there was only so much one could do, right?

One band I really like is Nurt. Unfortunately, their LP is super hard to find. I have a pretty crackly beat up copy I chanced upon from a Polish seller, and it apparently sold poorly. I haven't spun it in a few years as my records are in Canada while my corporeal self is in Japan, but I recall digging it immensely - psyched out prog (or progged out psych) with sitar, from 1973. I think there was a CD that came out in Poland, but it was kind of under the radar.

One of my fav female vocal LPs is "Ogien" by Mira Kubasinska. Essentially a Breakout LP. The title track is just stunning if you like the Joplinesque femvox over hard blues/psych. I think it's better than that description makes it sound, though! :)

I'll rack my brains for more. Any other Poles out there?

Well there's always Srefan Betke!

*runs away and hides*

*hides again, and better*

I heard a couple of their tracks and sounded definitely very good

Also some Syrius:
http://matula.hu/m/mtop20/syrius-igazi_tisztasag.mp3

And some Kex:
http://matula.hu/m/mtop20/kex-elszallt_egy_hajo_a_szelben.mp3

And some Lokomotív GT, which is more seventies-ish.
http://matula.hu/m/mtop20/lgt-szabadits_meg.mp3

I wonder what happened to our old pal László?

Nice thread. That Syrius mp3 upthread is pretty good.

Anyone interested in this stuff should spend on time on http://www.tamizdat.org/index.php

The 2nd Amiga-A-Go-Go disc has some great East German psychey/beaty sounds.

My other favourite DDR psyche record is Das Beste by Oktoberklub. It is more folk rock than psych, I suppose, but it bears similarities. Actually, given Oktoberklub's status as pro-regime musicians, their record is kind of like the musical equivalent of a folk-mass (a horror people who are not Irish catholics may never have experienced).

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Well Hung: Funk Rock Eruptions from Beneath Communist Hungary
(Finders Keepers)

Andy Votel and company never stop their commendable digging efforts,
unearthing wild rock, psych, and breaks from the most unlikely of
territories. This time they focus on the freak scene in Hungary, from
behind the Iron Curtain in the '60s and '70s. It all centers around a
youth culture slaking their thirst for the freedom piped in from the
West, and the many ways in which they were able to manipulate their
rigid government to endorse their musical efforts, even if the
Politburo would later come down hard on many of its practitioners. If
you've been following the Finders Keepers/B-Music script, you've
likely encountered the wild sounds of singer Sarolta Zalatnay already,
as well as tracks by Illes, Piramis and Locomotiv GT. They're all
repped onWell Hung, along with plenty of side projects,
collaborations, and lesser-known acts, beltin' like Janis and groovin'
like Traffic in defiance of the Big Red Machine. A girthy 78 minutes
of immense breaks, fuzz-wah conniptions, and uncut rock, funk, and
progressive sounds, largely uncollected and given the proper
historical framing in liners by Votel and Zalatnay herself. You'll
need both hands to manage this one!

Is it out now?

dunno, all I got was that text forwarded to me

dusty groove seems to have it.

i bought it last week, it's out. i don't know if there's going to be a US release like they've done with a handful of the FK stuff. it's pretty good if you like sarolta zalatnay's stuff.

That's not my favorite FK release. How much is her? Is the rest of the stuff similarly hard-rock-ish or is it more Eastern psych-y?

I'm beginning to suspect that "rock" from Turkey >>>>>>>>> rest of rock from Europe (minus the UK.)

No, but there's a pretty good comp (some of it's great, some ho-hum)Hava Narghile: Turkish Rock Music 1966 to 1975, with some passing enigmas and major inspirations like Erkin Koray, who also turns up in a documentary, Crossing The Bridge, in which Neubauten's Alexander Hacke leads a tour through an amazing cross-section of pop subgenre/genre mutations (damn unusual balance of talk and music, *good* talk and sometimes great music, effective cinematography too)(I think that was made in 2005, I just saw it on local cable the other night, so can't be too rare)

One of the Black to Comm compilations had some tracks by a wiggy Czech band called UMELA HMOTA. Think they had a sequential band status thing going on, i.e. there was an Umela Hmota 1, Umela Hmota 2 and even an Umela Hmota 3 (take THAT Amon Duul), but the two tracks I've heard are excellent, an they both have the word alkohol in the title. One track is a weird heavy blues with some free kazoo, and the other sounds to me just like the Screamin Mee-mee's!

(Why did I have to use the word 'wiggy'? Sorry.)

That's not my favorite FK release. How much is her? Is the rest of the stuff similarly hard-rock-ish or is it more Eastern psych-y?

one sarolta track, 5 or 6 by related artists (metro, omega, lokomotiv gt, skorpio) and there seems to be some incestuous interconnection between the musicians. it's definitely in the heavy, funky vein of the zalatnay album's better tracks, though there are a couple of tracks that could be called psych without stretching the definition too far.

nah, not near as good as the turkish stuff. but for a communist country they did pretty well.

Crossing The Bridge (by probably the best director in the world right now, Fatih Akin) is great stuff.

The top 50 Hungarian songs of the 60s: lots of top psych pop, freakbeat, garage tunes here in two parts:
http://www.quart.hu/quart/nagy/20121130-a-beatkorszak-50-legjobb-magyar-szama-masodik-resz.html
http://www.quart.hu/quart/nagy/20121129-a-beatkorszak-legjobb-50-magyar-szama-elso-resz.html

Excellent! I'll have to go through that list.

I've been listening to Poland's Skaldowie a lot recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpcaM2qg5-c

I've been listening to Poland's Skaldowie a lot recently

Man! So have I. Especially that same album the "Pretty Violist" song is from:)