Rokukai I've been fishing around this website looking for stuff I'd heard and not heard and learning a ton. On hiatus from progressive rock, it didn't occur to me to look up Kraan, but I'm glad I did.

After a six year progressive diet I've come to the conclusion Kraan is my favorite band in the genre. I had a difficult time choosing which album to review first--Andy Nogger is my favorite progressive album, and one of my all time favorite albums. Kraan live is great, but the rousing energy and lengthy solos make it something of a saturday night jam record for me at my advancing age.

It just happens to be saturday and I'm listening to "Hello Ja Ja I Don't Know" for the first time in ages, what a glorious funky sound! Not featured on any of their studio albums, the song captures the spirit of this record perfectly--lengthy, propulsive improvisational jamming dominates here, and Kraan favorites "Nam Nam" "Holiday am Materhorn" and "Kraan Arabia" are the featured jams. These musicians play incredibly tight rock and roll that skirts with jazz (primarily in their improv skill and presence of an AWESOME electric sax courtesy of Johannes Pappert). The sax really adds a great color to many songs in the Kraan oevre, and Kraan Live! throws it down in spades. Nam Nam, wow. Have mercy.

One of my favorite live albums ever, the energy crackles in the room. Nobody's really cheering, it's like everybody's standing around with their mouths open gaping at the magic they're witnessing. Hellmut Hattler's bass really propels the songs, and his interplay with Peter Wolbrandt's guitar is sensational.

Then, on some songs, Pappert plays lead sax. This gives Kraan the edge over their contemporaries in the variety department. I can see how the Wolbrandt's snide vocals could turn a listener off, but they are hardly the showcase here, or on any Kraan tune for that matter.

Great rock from an awesomely underrated band. Many fans consider this their best work, although I prefer the shorter, Conny Plank engineered Andy Nogger. Hey, you can't go wrong with either, or almost any Kraan record from the early seventies for that matter. They're still churning out quality, genre-bending albums to this day.

I can't call it a masterpiece of jazz music, because it's really not jazz. Still, it's an alltime classic that should be remembered forever. I'm giving it the full five.

Sean Trane Probably their best album and certainly the one showing their talents best, this double vinyl really gives the best possible selection of tracks from their first three albums plus three new tracks as well as an improvisation on another track. What might be revealing about this album is the absence of tracks from the Wintrupp album (which I thought was rather patchy), and the concentration on the debut and third albums. Again placated with disputable artwork, this

Of course as you might have guessed there are some lengths on such an album (but this was so typical of that era’s recordings), most notably on lenghty soloing and indulgent duos even if showing that these guys probably knew their crafts so well that they slept with their instruments. This is so evident with bassist Hottler’s Rickenbacker bass (check out the lenghty version of Nam Nam, which is much livelier than its studio version). Matterhorn is also double its original length, but so much less indulgent showing us the songwriting difference between the previous album’s first and second vinyl side. The first disc ends with a superb rendition of the opening track of the Kraan recording career.

The second disc (the Cd reissue is a single CD so this would be track 5 ;-) is the title track of their last studio album at the time and is followed by an improvisation on its theme afterwards. A lenghty new track (well actually more of a jam) ends the third side on a rather subdued manner. It should be noted that all three “new tracks” presented here are not of incredible calibre, but stay on-par with the average. The double album closes on a version of the superb Kraan Arabia, standout from the debut album.

The musical position of Kraan in Germany was quite unique, with its almost Krautrock sound (ala Amon Duul II), but a clear jazz-rock influence, but not quite like other German bands such as Thristy Moon, Passport or Release Music Orchestra which were much more classic fusion, but this actually adds to their interest. They will go on for many years, but future albums will be increasingly average and more common (what I really mean is less-inspired, but I am not willing to admit it ;-), but this album is really worth it, but I would not suggest it as an introduction for the group.