Houston Fearless, USA

Houston Fearless - s/t. 1969 Imperial

Another title from the CD-R revisit project.

Houston Fearless were a standard issue late 1960s styled heavy blues psych band, with gospel, folk, and pop trimmings. There is some exceptional fuzz soloing, coupled alongside wicked Hammond licks, that makes it an overall worthwhile listen. Guideposts are the usual suspects like Cream and Iron Butterfly. The first 6 tracks are quite good, excepting the lame 'His Eye is on the Sparrow'. Then it completely implodes from there, as the band tries different musical styles, hoping something will stick. Of course, none of it does. A decent genre piece, though nothing more.

Worth noting that, despite the moniker, the band were from Los Angeles. It would appear the odd name is based on this film manufacturing company who were based in LA at the time of the album's release.

Priority: none

News: Berits Halsband to come out on CD soon from Musicbazz!!!

Wow! Not sure we can receive better news than this. With Avalanche finally getting reissued, we are down to the very last of my Gnosis 14's not to be on CD. And Berits Halsband is one of them. One of my favorite discoveries from the early 2000's period, and still a great unknown. My full review can be found on the UMR site

Musicbazz is the Greek label responsible for the fine Pete and Royce LP and CD released a couple of years back. They are also the parent label to our good friend Spacefreak and his label Cosmic Eye. Thanks to him and reader Gal for the notification of this great news. The album will be reissued in both LP and CD formats.

One more great one reissued! YEA!

Berits Halsband, Sweden ***REISSUED***

Berits Halsband. 1975 private

***Reissued by MusicBazz Dec 2015

Moved to UMR

Priority: 1

9/20/09 (new entry); 8/23/15 (complete)

Fragile, Germany

Fragile - Lonely Preacher / Our Song. 1974 Rittberk

Great - another band named Fragile. Like Touch, Time, and Drama, it's a moniker that has been heavily used, and hard to research.

In any case, we have another serious rarity here provided by The AC. Technically this is a 7" single, but it's 33 RPM, and the length of an EP. The AC tells us: "Extremely obscure EP (just over 15 minutes) of what I would feel comfortable labeling as "heavy prog", a genre description that I usually find to be overly vague. However, in this case it really fits. Swirling wall-of-sound organ collides with heavy, crashing guitars over a fat, thumping rhythm section. It's from that netherworld where progressive rock, psychedelia and hard-rock/proto-metal had a meeting of the minds before heading off in their own directions. The vocals are fitting and more than decent, but most of the space is given over to heavy riffing and instrumental jamming. The vast majority of new discoveries that come out of Germany are from the seemingly bottomless (some would say tiresomely so, at this point) well of the late 70s/early 80s private press boom, so it's refreshing to occasionally be reminded that the deeper waters of the original prog/krautrock scene have not yet completely run dry. This is excellent stuff that I believe would have a wide appeal, so hopefully one of the German reissue/archival labels will track these guys down and find some additional tapes of similar quality sitting quietly in one of their attics, just waiting to be dusted off."

I also found the music highly appealing. Very much the sound of Germany during 1974, but with an added complexity moving it more towards progressive rock and less the traditional hard Krautrock sound. Probably tracks closest to the obscure band Metropolis or even a bit like the archival Spektakel I suppose. This is just the type of band that Garden of Delights has been so successful in mining, and perhaps they will find a canister of great music for a full archival CD. Or at the very least, this will find its way onto one of their famous compilations. Great stuff.

Priority: 2