Message From Era Ora is exactly what this column needs; a fresh aura, something to zone out to in an entirely different way. Embryo recorded this tight little son of a bitch in 1976 at various live venues, and while the group birthed 20 albums or in its heyday, if you haven’t been paying attention I don’t hear any reason you shouldn’t consider Message a decent Square One. It’s amazing to me that a recording from 1976 can sound so pummeling during a tom-tom rape while a lot of the records I spin from NOW don’t carry the same gut-sucking punch. Beyond that, if you get inside these compositions and stay with them from top to bottom it becomes apparent there are wicked forces at work here, and nothing short of a tractor-beam pull is required to put jammy jazz-prog, drenched in Fender Rhodes, like this across. They nail it, and have fun doing it. The solos don’t hitch up or anything, but I prefer the sections wherein the players lock horns together and thresh out intense clusters of activity together the most. I’m reminded most of fellow travelers like Sun Ra, Magma, Art Bears, Gong and the like, along with AMT and other psychedelic jamsters. There’s a shitload of other stuff that factors in, which I’ll let you suss out once you inject Embryo’s Message for yourself.
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