Here's a brilliant review on "Druid One - Live at Essen Pop and Blues Festival 1970" by my friend Italian musician and music writer ALESSANDRO MONTI (https://unfolkam.wordpress.com/) a very big fan and expert of Our Holy Band.
"Where do we come from?
All we know is that we are born on this planet, we live, we walk, we play, we work and then we leave leaving traces of our passage without knowing what will happen to those traces, and without paying the slightest attention to who will follow or collect them.
I have often asked myself these questions while listening to magnificent recordings like this one, in which half the members of the group are now elsewhere, entities of pure spirit beyond this material world without knowing that their improvised music was so intense as to take root in the planet and be rediscovered at unthinkable moments... or maybe they knew?
Curious to think that the other half of the group continues to make music: a classical cellist and a violin teacher disinterested in his past: that's life. But to many of us this music still communicates a unique and unrepeatable emotion, a ritual that is renewed with every listen as if it did not belong to any era... perhaps because it belongs to ALL eras?
The answer blows in the wind with this music taken from a concert in 1970, recorded impeccably by German radio at the time of the second album based on the four elements, it is no coincidence that two of them appear: water at the beginning and at the end, after an alchemical sonic journey, the dance of the earth.
There was a time when we literally had to work miracles to find live recordings of our favorite bands, then the doors of the cosmic archives opened and we listened to all sorts of things. Today the release of a new TEB album seems almost normal, in reality all this is miraculous, especially if we think about the time spent on the dusty shelves of some archives. The music speaks for itself and no comment (let alone "critical") could add something sensible... just a few technical aspects to note:
side A of this album starts in fade in, certainly after the performance has already begun, while side B ends with a fade out while the group seems to be able to continue endlessly, this makes me think (like Luca wrote) that perhaps it is not a complete tape, but the unrepeatable magic fully justifies its publication with the rare quote from Abelard & Heloise to seal the set: a surprise too good to be true."
Recording: ️ ️ ️ [5/5]
Vinyl dynamics: ️ [3/5]
Performance: ️ ️ [5/5]
Magic: ️ ️[5/5]
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