Exposé Online banner

Exposé Online

Not just outside the box, but denying the existence of boxes.
Covering music from the fringes since 1993.

Reviews

Embryo — Apo-Calypso
(Garden of Delights CD196, 1977/2023, CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-07-09

Apo-Calypso Cover art

In 1975 I moved to the Bay Area from coastal Oregon and began hanging out at several of the local record stores (mostly in Berkeley) on weekends, especially at Rather Ripped Records, which I can credit with really opening my mind musically, a place where you could hang out all day listening to in-store play of imports while flipping through countless albums. They would never throw you out — of course I always ended up buying things, but have to admit I heard a lot more than I bought, and one of the bands they would play was Embryo. I do remember hearing We Keep On and Surfin’ and thinking they were a pretty cool band. I recall one day around ‘78 flipping through the import section and seeing their latest album Apo-Calypso and being horrified, seeing the cover and thinking they went disco. Many years later, when I finally had an opportunity to hear it, I discovered my fears were all for nothing — this was an excellent record. So who is this woman on the front cover who looks like she just stepped out of the cast of Saturday Night Fever? Nobody seems to know — even the band members seem to recall she was just someone hanging around the studio when the picture was taken! That was certainly a long intro to this review, but today Embryo is one of my favorite German bands from the 70s and beyond, and in fact they continued releasing new albums up to the time of bandleader Christian Burchard’s death in 2018, and even beyond; their unique sound was always rich with world music flavors, mixed with elements of jazz, rock, and funk, even blues and psych at times. Mal Waldron and Charlie Mariano had been members at different times, and in fact the band composition seemed to always be changing through the years, with Burchard (here on organ, vocals, vibraphone, and marimba) and Roman Bunka (guitar, oud, veena, and vocals) being the two constants of the lineup, here joined by Michael Wehmeyer (keyboards), Uwe Müllrich (bass, who also played on the previous years’ Bad Heads and Bad Cats), and drummer and percussionist Butze Fischer. There were guests aplenty too: Edgar Hofmann played flute on “Amnesty Total” (original side B opener); and on the fourteen-plus minute closer “Getalongwithasong,” Trilok Gurtu played tabla and his mother Shoba Gurtu sang, resulting in a wonderful piece that was partially recorded nearly a year earlier than the others at a studio in Mumbai, India, a powerful statement, and perhaps the album’s strongest track. The original album’s A-side feautures four cuts, opening with “Break Into Pieces” and closing with the equally engaging and appropriately titled “Knast-Funk,” the two tracks between (“Endless Feeling” and “Together”) call forth a strong jazz spirit, featuring superb work on mallet percussion. Three bonus tracks are included with this edition, “The Bad Times Are Gone” (a live cut from ‘76), “Mühldorfsong” (a studio out-take from 1977), and “Prisioneri Politici” (a live track from ‘78), the latter two originally appearing on 1980‘s Anthology album (or Every Day Is Okay as the CD is titled). When an artist has over fifty albums, they can’t all be the best, but Apo-Calypso stands strong among Embryo’s late 70s releases.

Filed under: Reissues, 2023 releases, 1977 recordings

Related artist(s): Embryo, Trilok Gurtu

More info
http://diregarden.com/god196.html

 

What's new

These are the most recent changes made to artists, releases, and articles.