Modrigue The ultimate fusion journey to Asia

"Reise" is the German word for "Travel", and that's exactly what the album has to offer here: a genuine musical journey... to the East. After the band's average jazz/rock/world releases during the second half of the 70's (last good album being 1973's "We Keep On"), EMBRYO's leader Christian Burchard decided to save his baby and brought with him the other members for a long trip, from Middle-East to India. During their journey, they met various local musicians, played jam sessions and recorded tracks in their company.

Instead of the band's initial jazz/rock/ethnic approach, the music is clearly oriented towards middle-eastern, oriental and Indian styles this time. Most compositions combine these genres with progressive rock (like the great "Kurdistan" and "Farid"), or even punk ("Eis Ist, Wie's Ist"), while others are fully oriental (like the Indian "Chan Delawar Khan" and "Rog de Quadamuna Achna"). As you may expect, the palette of instruments used is very large. The result is astonishing and mesmerizing. This fusion of musical genres was quite original at the time. Furthermore, there are no weak on the record. Such a little treasure will make you travel from desert sands to ancient Asian temples, through mystical lands.

This 1979 opus was the first double album of the band. However, the most common released version nowadays is the single CD edition, which does not include the songs "Paki Funk", "Maharaj" and "Lassie, Lassie", but this does not matter much.

"Embryo's Reise" is one of the finest examples of "world music", presenting a genuine and unique crossing of Occidental and Eastern genres. Even 40 years after, such mastery in mixing these musical ingredients from opposite origins remains still rare. Highly recommended if you enjoy middle-eastern and Indian music! Simply one of the best albums from EMBRYO!

Sean Trane This double album is certainly one of the best attempts to fuse progressive-type rock with ethnic/world music and few have succeeded as well as Embryo's Reise (voyage). Indeed around the departure of the ever-important Roman Bunka from the group, plans had been made to travel from Istanbul to Pakistan and Nepal, while recording their musical encounters with the indigenes found on their paths. The album is not just that, there are also tracks coming from left, right & centre, but overall, that's a fair description of the album's content. Among Embryo's latest recruits were guitarist Drexler (ex-Out Of Focus) and wind player Josch (ex-Missus Beastly) whom were part of the trip. The gatefold vinyl comes with a deliciously illustrated booklet detailing their trip in both German and English texts. I hear the Cd version has that too, but I doubt of the legibility of the format.

Where this album is an important one for progheads is that the track list is abounding of jams between the Embryo members and the local musicians, sometimes resulting to some absolutely stunning jams. Difficult to start describing these jams, but most had a structure for conventional entendre (no free form or voluntarily dissonant). The group was giving improvised multimedia concerts along the way, some including stunning live performance paintings. In either case, I'm sure they brought back hundreds of hours of jams and gave us a small selection here. Some of these jams are actually really successful, mixing perfectly the European (often electric) rock musicians and the often-acoustic local musicians (such as the opening Road To Asia), while others are more ethnic players playing their stuff while Europeans are waiting for a chance to hop on boards. On the other hand there are some openly and wildly saturated guitar rock pieces.

Symbolic of the 70's hippy dream, this road is now highly unlikely to all western or eastern youth as international conflicts have long rendered the road impossible to accomplish safely nowadays. A real must and not only in