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Release Music Orchestra — Vlotho 1977
(Garden of Delights CD193, 1977/2022, CD)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2025-05-17

Vlotho 1977 Cover art

Tomorrow’s Gift was a heavy psychedelic blues-rock band from Hamburg that released a couple of albums in the early 70s. They supported the Release Movement, an organization to assist drug addicts get back on their feet, helping with their resocialization and integration back into society after serving time. Because of their close association with the Release movement, the band changed itsr name to The Release Group, then to Release Music Orchestra or RMO for short. By June 1974 they had released their first album, Life, under their new name. After some personnel changes, a second album Garuda was released in 1975, and a third album Get the Ball in 1976, all on the Brain label, by which time they had transformed from rock and psych beginnings into a formidable jazz-rock unit, not at all unlike the British bands of the Canterbury sound a few years earlier (think Soft Machine, Egg, and others). There are no studio recordings from 1977, so this six-song recording of their outdoor performance at Vlotho festival in July 1977 is the only documentation of the band at that point in time. The group consisted of Frank Fischer (bass), keyboardist Manfred Rürup, Günther Reger (saxophone), and drummer Wolfgang Thierfeldt, along with guest percussionist Hans Behrendt. No vocals. There’s a lot of power packed into these six live cuts, one from each of their previous two albums, including an eleven-plus minute working of “Sundance” (as opposed to the seven minute version on Get the Ball) as well as “Up by the Riverside” from their forthcoming album Beyond the Limit, all flawlessly executed, but far and away the most stunning example of what this band can do is the set closer “Free and Outdoors 77,” a blistering sixteen-minute jam featuring solo spots for all of the players over its duration. Since no official CD releases exist of the RMO studio titles, Vlotho 1977 is probably as good a place as any to start your exploration of one of the finest German jazz-rock bands of their day.

Filed under: New releases, 2022 releases, 1977 recordings

Related artist(s): Release Music Orchestra

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http://diregarden.com/god193.html

 

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