snobb The second Embryo studio album shows their transition from the jazz fusion of their (live) debut, to psychedelic jam sessions with some jazz elements, which will become their calling card just a few years later.

All the compositions consist of heavy electric piano, organ and Mellotron driven by African percussion with a psychedelic flavor. With some improvs coming from their jazzy past, there is also a lot of rock (psychedelic/space) elements in this album's music, fortunately both directions are mixed quite organically.

The 14+ minutes long "Spain Yes, Franco Finished" is a real rock song with very Ian Anderson-like flute and vocals. This album is really interesting evidence of a quite fragile period in krautrock when early experimental jazz influenced bands moved to a more psychedelic rock/jamming direction, but still have almost the same proportion of both genres in their music. This transformation generally was finished by 1973, after that time you mostly hear the "classic" krautrock sound.

A first class album from one of the leading krautrock bands, recommended for fans of this genre.

Miler72 Embryo has always been Christian Burchard and whoever he can find at the time, so that always affected the outcome of each Embryo album. I understand there is an Amon Duul connection (members of that commune), so I shouldn't be too surprised Amon Duul II members have popped up from time to time. 1971's Rache, released in 1971, is their second album. Jimmy Jackson, who played on several Amon Duul II albums, including Tanz der Lemminge and Wolf City, and apparently (uncredited) on Tangerine Dream's Electronic Meditation, appears here, playing Mellotron and organ. I have to say the vocals are the weak point of this album, but the musical quality more than makes up for it. At first it starts off in Jethro Tull territory, complete with flute, but you won't mistake this for a Tull album because of the clavinet used and some world music influences. "Time" while featuring vocals, features a tone of great use of clavinet and organ giving it an almost funky feel. "Revenge" features some really great Mellotron brass from Jimmy Jackson, while "Spain? Yes! Franco, Finished" shows once again the weakness of the album and the lyrics are badly written, although the lyrics very much protest the Franco regime in Spain. But then it's the instrumental part this band really shines, and if you can block out the vocals, you get treated with more great clavinet and Mellotron. I really glad to try out Embryo, this album, despite the vocals, really blew me away, and it comes highly recommended.

Sean Trane Embryo's second album is just as good and important in Germany's early prog history. Largely instrumental and constantly surprising , Rache is a very worthy follow-up to their groundbreaking debut. Those eastern influences meddled in their excellent jazz-rock makes want to create another sub-movement that I would call Folk-jazz-prog (just kidding) but the fac t that this is from 71 (the term Fusion did not exist back then ) is certainly of of the earliest examples of World-Fusion music. The two extra tracks are not from that era (91) but do stay in the spirit of the album and do not disturb the newcomer as much as the old hippy that wore his vinyl to transparancy.