Blackout (poland)
Blackout
At last a reissue of a great album that features some of the cheesiest organ sounds (meant in a good way) carved into wax in the 1960s; groovy and bizarre Hammond runs are present and accounted for, residing happily with the smart songs, the fine guitar playing, and the gravelly vocals of the bands singers (male and female), on the only album this Polish band ever saw released, just before they changed their name (to Breakout), and their sound (to progressive rock); they started as a beat band, albeit one addicted to the dark side of beat as demonstrated to them in person by Eric Burdon & the Animals; they developed their own weird sound, which was dubbed "Big Beat" by someone clever-a term that still exists in the former Eastern Bloc to describe this sort of offbeat (so to speak), wigged-out and intense home grown music; after some radio success, Blackout apparently recorded a slew of singles, some of which appear here as bonus tracks; twenty songs in all, mostly written by underground novelist and poet Bogdan Loebl, plus liner notes that include an interview with band-leader Tadeusz Nalepa as well as an overview of the recording industry in Poland in the 1960s. Its not every day you get historical background and interesting music in the same package.