I don’t know many obscure bands who have
faired as well as the Austrian group Kyrie Eleison because obscure they
certainly are. Although the band’s only album was released on vinyl in
1977 and later re-issued on CD by it’s instigator Gerald Krampl in 1991
followed two years later by the then unreleased “The blind windows
suite”, the band remains to this day a very obscure group emphasizing
strongly on the symphonic strength of the seventies. Even if the quality of
the recordings is not of super quality Mio records in Israel nevertheless
found it worthwhile to group ALL of the band’s recordings and release them
as a 3CD box set limited to just 1000 copies worldwide, the ultimate Kyrie
Eleison experience. So inside the box you will find the full album “The
fountain beyond the sunrise”, the unreleased composition “The blind
windows suite” and the lost “Live 1975” album containing 45 minutes of
unreleased material. A gem for any collector even if the quality isn’t
perfect ! To understand all of this much better I have to
take you back to the seventies where there was no talk of CD, minidisc,
digital recording or editing. Instead there was cassette and reel to reel
tape, thus in all cases tape which would lose quality everytime you would
re-record. Using these tapes today and tackling them with the latest
technology still doesn’t result in a perfect sound. It’s like giving the
best chef some poor ingredients to prepare a five star meal. It simply
doesn’t work ! The box is conceived in a chronological way in order to
capture the band’s history between 1974 and 1978. Founded after the demise
of the band Phoebos, Kyrie Eleison is formed around keyboardplayer Gerald
Krampl who combines his classical piano education with his love for Genesis,
Yes and ELP. In order to promote the band in the Vienna area the band
recorded all of their material on a home tape machine in one take. This
material was already issued by Indigo in 1994. This time however the poor
mastertape has been enhanced and previously unreleased material has ben
added. With over 74’ of material recorded in one take in a tiny rehearsal
room with primitive equipment of course the endresult can’t be compared
with Pink Floyd’s “Dark side of the moon” however it gives a nice
indication in the symphonic direction of the band which contains elements of
Eela Craig, Anyone’s Daughter, Novalis and Camel. Here and there the
presence of dropouts disturb the endresult whilst of course one can’t
expect a very detailed, well balanced sound bearing in mind the drums hide a
lot of subtle elements. Sometimes the band also flirts with the psychedelic
format as during ‘Man is a wanderer’ which also highlights Krampl’s
romantic keyboardplaying. Part of ‘A friend’ and ‘June’ sounds very
much like the Nice’s rendition of ‘Rondo’ which once again illustrates
the fact that Kyrie Eleison ‘used’ a lot of influences in order to
create their very ‘own’ music. The material very much evokes what was
happening at the time when creative souls with a classical background were
turning towards rock. It’s the kind of music which was being performed
enthousiastically all over the world in tiny youth clubs. As in most cases
however the quality of the singer is far inferior than the music ! On 29th may 1975 one of the band’s
many concerts was recorded by their friend Friedrich Koy. Apart from one
song which later emerged on their official studio album all the material on
this live recording remains exclusive to this release. On the opening track
‘A pane of glass’ which lasts for half an hour, we witness once again
the dreadful vocals of Wolfgang Wessely. Luckilly we are treated to some
wonderful mellotron which, as samples didn’t exist at the time, prove that
Gerald Krampl must have posessed a genuine Mellotron at the time. Because
this is a live recording taking place in a small club sadly the people
aren’t that quiet during the soft passages which is a pitty if you listen
to the intro for ‘Glass people’ for instance. Gerald’s ‘Keyboard
improvisations’ sounds almost like an alternate version of Rick
Wakeman’s solo spot on the “Yessongs” triple album. Sadly the talking
goes on whilst drummer Karl Novotny ruins the atmosphere of the composition
by adding some unwanted rhythm. And still the talking goes on so one wonders
why people bother to show up at these concerts ! The naïvity of the band as
well as their appreciation for ELP can be found in ‘Get ready Eddy’
which in a way could be compared to ‘Jeremy bender’. By this time the band was planning to record
it’s first solo album but not before three members of the band left. They
were replaced by three members from the group Autogenesis. The arrival of
singer Michael Schubert whose voice swims between that of Peter Gabriel and
Fish was a big advantage. Although having been promissed the use of the then
brandnew 8-track recording machine, the band had to make do using the Revox
2-track machines making it impossible to do much overdubs resulting in a
rather poor quality of sound. Nevertheless “The fountain beyond the
sunrise” finally gave Kyrie Eleison a possibility to get their music known
throughout the world. The self distributed vinyl edition of the album on
Merlin records was released in 1977. A CD version saw the light of day in
’91, now followed by a ‘cleaned up’ version as part of this trilogy.
It’s a pitty the band didn’t have any experience at the time because the
material certainly meritted to have been recorded under better
circumstances. The titletrack contains a Genesis atmosphere one can
associate with the “Foxtrot” period whilst ‘Forgotten words’ holds a
lot of magic to be found in the repertoire of Fruupp. The album closes with
‘Mounting the eternal spiral’, a new composition which again was
recorded in the band’s rehearsal room in 1978 delivering the best quality
on the album. So what can we say of this entire box set after
a listening marathon of well over three hours three times over ? No doubt
the various members of Kyrie Eleison will be thrilled to have ALL of their
material available as 24 bit digitally remastered CD’s as proof of their
musical venture between 1974 and 1978. For the general proglover mainly the
lack of quality will be the main reason for not parting with this musical
heritage. From a composition point of view the music of Kyrie Eleison
certainly is worth every second to be admired because it probably contains
the best symphonic rock ever to emerge from Austria. Pitty no decent
recordlabel offered them a fair chance at the time. Especially listening to
the first two discs in this package I can’t help but think of my own band
Quies of whom I only have some material on poorly recorded cassettes. Maybe
I should contact Mio records who could, to the best of their abilities, turn
these into better sounding CD’s. Quies has always been a big mystery in
the world of prog as well and finally deserves to be heard as much as this
Kyrie Eleison. Reviewed by John ‘Bobo’ Bollenberg |
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