While Aera’s first album „Humanum Est“ met with cautious approval in Germany’s leading music journal “Sounds” (1/76) in the 1970ies (a stylistic lucky bag that should have been left to mature), critic Manfred Gillig warmly recommends the album “Hand und Fuss” in Sounds 4/77 as one of the best German releases of the recent months, when he writes: “Here is a record from Frankonia (part of Bavaria, South Germany) that belongs to the most pleasant, congenial and enjoyable surprises that have reached my ears from German lands. Sure enough, the “Musikgruppe” Aera makes proper music, neither rock, nor jazz, simply music that is up to international standards and goes right through. Melodic dalliances, at times with a symphonic air, sometimes with a touch of chamber music, with a solid background rhythm and plenty of interaction between the musicians, very easygoing and at times quite free, but always together and never tense. You get the impression that here is a band that actually turns its rather cheerful and slightly crazy group life into music. There is no copying from Anglo-American models, no frantic attempt to be original. This music simply lives from and with the musicians, for example the dialogues between flute, violin and saxophone and a fanciful guitar, played by Muck Groh, who wrote large parts of the music on this LP and used to play with “Ihre Kinder”. To cut a long story short: this second LP of Aera’s is full of rhyme and reason, and can be warmly recommended as one of the best German releases of the past months.” The “Babyblaue Seiten” has “Humanum Est” as a solid debut with rather distinct music style, which, although not quite up to scratch with the diversity and intensity of the colleagues from Embryo, is a nice addition to the music collection of those who love krautig-jazzy sounds, and it scores 9 out of 15. The reviewer liked the album “Hand und Fuss” a lot better, and stresses that Christoph Krieger on the violin is adding just the acoustic colour that was missing on Aera’s first album. He describes the music as relaxed, colourful, animated and virtuoso, and points out Muck Groh’s importance as Aera’s soul, whose rocking bluesy guitar play serves as a nice counter effect to the jazzy wind section. He especially commends the floating, nearly extraterrestrial flute interludes by saxophonist and flutist Klaus Kreuzeder, in particular when joining up with Krieger’s singing violin. The music is appreciated as having a very special style, somewhere between jazz, jazz-rock, folk and Krautrock, radiating from within. This time it scores 11 out of 15. Not only the reviewer regrets that Aera split up in this formation after this album, since the style of the next albums with Klaus Kreuzeder as lead was completely different.

Translation: Dr. Martina Häusler

www.musikgruppeaera.de

www.neueaera.de

www.muckgroh.de

www.trick-music.de

www.myspace.com/dieneueaera

www.myspace.com/muckgroh

Aera - Hand und Fuss

A:
mechelwind 09:24
alabaster keaton 03:06
wrdlbrmfd 05:33
(fürn Karl Valentin)

B:
elephen elephants 08:40
herbstzeitlos 02:27
Ad absurdum 05:06
kamele on 05:35