Krokodil - An Invisible World Revealed  CD (album) cover





3.53 | 26 ratings

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Sean Trane
Special Collaborator
Prog Folk
3 stars 3.5 stars really!!!

After Hardy Heep had left, Krokodil soldiered on as a quartet, but found life increasingly difficult, because the tours to neighbouring countries (Ger & Fra) meant hiring a regular crew, and revenues were not sufficient, so they had to take part-time jobs, like session work, accompanying band (for Demon Thor) or music lessons. It is through these jobs that they met the unavoidable German producer Dieter Dierks, who offered to record their following album in his studio. So drummer and leader Durst lead the troupes into the group's best album to date: Invisible World revealed, released in early 72 with a splendid heroic-fantasy artwork on a gatefold sleeve and a group picture in a cemetery on the innerfold.

Opening on the pure-psych Lady Of Attraction, the album is a relatively fine (but rather belated, in retrospect to its date) psychedelic rock album, that could be coming out of TYA's Stonedhenge or Cricklewood Green albums. After the short and forgettable acoustic Miss Trimmings, the album plunges into a 15-mins Indian-raga extravaganza Odyssey In Om, where guitarist Anselmo gives a credible performance on the sitar and singer Weideli uses some freaked-out flute and harmonica, the whole thing being arranged by the great Dieter Dirks. Once Anselmo returns to his guitar, the track veers crunchy bluesy/hard-rock and goes on a jam ala Steamhammer on Speech or Tritteoria Kriget-style with some (loads) good Mellotron (just lying in Dierks' studio)., making the whole thing enjoyable, but still raw enough for my liking.

Past the almost-forgettable hard-rocking Green Fly opening the flipside (but there are trons of mello in it), the 14-mins Looking At Time is the album's other cornerstone, starting acoustically, but soon crescendoing at cruising speed and developing into an excellent lengthy mainly-instrumental finale. The album-closing Last Doors could also be a TYE track, this time from Shhhh or Watt.

This album had seen a cheap Cd bootleg, but when the good Second Battle label reissued it legitimately in nice digipak, they found three bonus tracks; the first of which, Pollution, fits the album's rockier songs' mould. Two lengthy 11-mins+ Krokodil -Session tracks are also tacked on, both recorded a tad louder than the rest of the album. Obviously the jam had already started a while ago when the tapes started rolling and we get a wild and half- improvised slightly jazzy loose rock track ala Grateful Dead. The second part is a blusier mainly-instrumental TYA-like jam, but again nothing far removed from the album's general soundscapes.

Unfortunately for the band, once this album released, their UA label went broke, but found Bellaphon soon enough, but it would be the beginning of the end for the reptile. Anyway, AIWR is a rather good album coming from the Swiss Alps, and is enhanced by three bonus tracks, so what does the people want more?

Sean Trane | 3/5 |




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