OM: DORAN / LEIMGRUBER / BURRI / STUDER – Rautionaha (JapoLP-1977) and Montreaux Live & More (LP-1975)

Label: Japo Records – JAPO 60016
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album; Country: Germany - Released: 1977
Style: Free Jazz, Jazz-Rock, Contemporary Jazz
Recorded December 1976 at Tonstudio Bauer, Ludwigsburg.
Engineer – Martin Wieland
Photography By – Andreas Raggenbass
Photography By [Cover] – Lajos Keresztes
Producer – Thomas Stöwsand

Urs Leimgruber – soprano and tenor saxophones, bass clarinet, percussion
Christy Doran – guitar
Bobby Burri – bass
Fredy Studer – drums, percussion

A1 - For Ursi ... 9:49
A2 - Stephanie ... 11:56
B1 - Song For My Lady ... 11:11
B2 - Rautionaha ... 13:41

The Swiss quartet of OM, which found just the freedom it needed in ECM ’ s studios for a good decade, flung open the doors with colorful aplomb on Rautionaha, a rare JAPO release. To this early date the group brings a kaleidoscope of shared experience. The sound is appropriately splintered. Guitarist Christy Doran pens the kick-in-the-gut opener, “ For Ursi. ” Unable to resist the attraction from the get-go, saxophonist Urs Leimgruber colors the twilight with his heady tenor, chaining ladders of virtuosity with attentive form. His gurgling expositions of momentary abandon give Doran just the break he needs to cast a reverberant magic with tails flying. The superb rhythm work from percussionist Fredy Studer and bassist Bobby Burri completes this wall of light. The latter gives us “ Stephanie, ” his first of two cuts. This meditation of gongs and electronics coalesces into some fine soliloquies from the composer, while the full drumming and six-string picking shimmer like morning sun on the horizon ’ s lip. The prickly tenor is a bonus. Speaking of which, Leimgruber puts his writing to the test in “ Song For My Lady. ” Something of a ballad, in it he becomes a crying wayfarer who walks the same circle of self-reflection until there is only music left of the one that produced it. Lifting this ponderous weight off our shoulders is Burri ’ s title offering, which grows like weed in a groovy embrace. His bass work glows here. Leimgruber opts for soprano, reaching heights of multi-phonic brilliance that no footstool can reach. The effect is nothing short of extraordinary. The quartet ends on a whimsical punctuation mark, for all like a flag without a country, a star without a sky. In the absence of definite shape, we are free to induce our own.

 

Label: Indian Records – ST 1001
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album; Country: Germany - Released: 1975
Style: Free Jazz, Jazz-Rock
Side 1: recorded July 3, at the Montreux Jazz Festival 
Side 2: recorded September 16&17, 1974 at Sinus-Studio Berne, Switzerland 
All tracks mixed September 26&30, 1974 at Sinus-Studio Berne, Switzerland
Cover – Kurt Eckert
Engineer – Peter Mc Taggart (tracks: B1-B3), Steff Sulke (tracks: A1)
Mixed By – Peter Mc Taggart (tracks: A1-B3)
Photography By – William Feess; Producer – OM

A1 - (Füddler) On The Roof  ... 23:45
B1 - Testament Of A Dog ... 4:31
B2 - For Moritz ... 8:19
B3 - When Eyes Are Smiling ... 9:06

The iconoclastic group known as OM (after John Coltrane ’ s album of the same name) took root in the musical wilds of Lucerne, Switzerland in 1972, and for the next decade filled its cup with an idiosyncratic blend of Free Jazz, Rock and Free improvisation. 

Not only was the electric guitar with many electronic devices , such as ring modulator , delay, coupled . OM was one of the first European jazz groups who always had a sound engineer there because they " worked with sound ... so even with an electrically amplified contrabass with ground effects ( ..) , a plant with Hall effects for saxophone, some also the drums and the percussion was reinforced. OM played the Montreux Jazz Festival and at hundreds of concerts in Europe, they became very well known not only in Switzerland, but also in Germany .

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