Heavy Christmas - FULL ALBUM [1971 Prog Rock / Krautrock Germany]

Read more at TRACKS: 00:00 Libido - Evolution 03:13 Marcel - God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen 05:52 Joy Unlimited - All Heaven and All Earth are Silent 14:07 Virus - Mary Meets Tarzan 15:15 Dies Irae - Silent Night 20:55 Libido - Come on Everybody 27:34 Ardo Dombec - Heavenly Rose 31:29 Dies Irae - Shepard’s Song 31:54 Ardo Dombec - Open Your Door, Open Your Mind 34:05 Virus - X-mas Submarine 37:38 Flute & Voice - Ecce Navicula “Heavy Christmas“ is a christmas-themed krautrock sampler put out in 1971 on the Pilz label, the home at the time of bands such as Dies Irae, Virus, Joy Unlimited and Rufus Zuphall. Expecting such a thing to be possibly a little more than embarrassing, It really is a surprisingly excellent collection of German prog, most of which is exclusive to this record. There’s a couple of fun tracks from “Libido“, a band seemingly created for this set that consisted of Achim Reichel (guitar, vocals) and Frank Dostal (vocals) who were the backbone of “A.R. & Machines“ and earlier, The Rattles. You can hear a bit of their spacey guitars at the end of “Evolution“ that is reminiscent of A.R. & Machines. Flute & Voice were the duo of Hans “Flute“ Reffert (guitar, flute) and Hans Brandeis (sitar, guitar, vocals). Coincidentally, I have spoken to Hans Brandeis, who was a guitarist in Night Sun Mournin’, the earlier incarnation of Night Sun. I asked him about this record and he said: Hans: How we got involved into the “Heavy Christmas“ project? Well, our first album came out at the PILZ label, and at that time, PILZ obviously wanted to put out a kind of promotional recording on which all the groups of the PILZ label should be presented together. Therefore, our producer asked us if we were interested in contributing something. Of course, we were... However, I didn’t want to make fun of Christmas songs, and I also did not want to follow the cliché of English song lyrics. So, I selected an old German Christmas song, which had preserved a lot of the character of Renaissance music. The only problem was that there were only German lyrics existing. But, as I said, I didn’t want to have an English translation, but wanted to have them translated into Latin, instead. So, I went to see my old Latin teacher from school who translated the lyrics for me from German to Latin... So what’s the original German name of the “Ecce Navicule“ song? Hans: “Es kommt ein Schiff geladen...“ means “There comes a ship a-loaden...“ The Latin text “Ecce Navicula“ means “Look there, the ship...“ For the music, we used the original arrangement for Renaissance lute, which, to make it sound a bit different, was played on a steel string guitar, but without changes. To make the piece sound a little bit weird, I added a parallel Sitar voice, and we inserted a part with voices and flutes. We tried to keep the dignity and solemnity in the song, while the other performances on the record did not do so, in my personal view. The text of the song probably comes from Johannes Tauler (1300-1361). Regarding the music, there is an interesting feature, a constant change between 6/4 and 4/4 rhythm. There are lots of different versions on YouTube, but hardly any of them really do this change. But we do... Most of the versions on YouTube are arrangements for choir, and usually the performers try to “modernize“ the song in weird ways... “Ecce Navicula“ is also used as a bonus track on Amber Soundroom’s reissue of “Imaginations of Light“, which was Flute & Voice’s first album. The rest is all of high quality and you can’t go wrong with the likes of strong tracks from Joy Unlimited and the pipes of Joy Fleming, Marcel, Virus and Dies Irea’s brutal version of “Silent Night“ (yes you read that correctly). Heavy Christmas indeed. #hardrock #heavypsych #protometal #stonerrock #heavyprog #70srock #70smetal #metal #progressiverock #progrock #psychedelicrock #psychedelic #60srock #heavymetal #bluesrock #fuzzrock #stonermetal #freakbeat #stonerdoom #doommetal #doom #southernrock