East Of Eden - Mercator Projected 1969

East of Eden's debut LP is one of the hardest rocking albums to come out of the progressive rock movement, and maybe the best non-Rolling Stones albums issued by English Decca during all of the late 1960s. It's also one of the most daring debut albums of its period, less tightly focused than, say, King Crimson's Court of the Crimson King but otherwise equally bold and maybe more challenging. The whole record is eerie -- coming from a pop culture where most psychedelic rock tended toward the light and airy -- the way the high-impact bass, drum, and guitar parts interact with the distinctly Oriental and Central/Eastern European classical influences. The title track is a surprise coming from any British psychedelic band of the period, opening with a pounding heavy metal beat pumped out on Steve York's bass and Dave Dufort's drums, while Dave Arbus' electric violin subs for what would normally be the rhythm guitar part and Geoff Nicholson's guitar twists a blues riff around before setting a Jimi Hendrix-like wave of tonal pyrotechnics ablaze for the finale. Though most of the rest isn't as hard rocking as that, it is still progressive rock with balls. "Isadora" may have a few flute flourishes too many, but it also has a beat, and "Waterways" (described on the original jacket as "Niotic Landscape in 5/4"), after a meandering opening, breaks loose in a hard-edged piece of heavy metal raga rock (with a sax part that fits in perfectly), something like what the Yardbirds might've attempted if they'd stayed together through 1969 and forsaken their pop pretensions -- and then it finishes with the kind of brooding, violin-based ballad that anticipates the 1973-era David Cross/John Wetton/Bill Bruford lineup of King Crimson. And "Centaur Woman" takes us back to almost a mid-1960s blues-rock mode, reminiscent of the Graham Bond Organization, except that East of Eden quickly kicks out the song structures, taking Coltrane-like sax excursions before throwing in an extended bass guitar solo. Side two of the album opens with the brooding "Bathers," perhaps the most conventional progressive cut on this album and, not coincidentally, the least interesting song here. "Communion," by comparison, is a composition whose inspiration was a Bartok string quartet, and is dominated by Arbus' violin. The album finishes with the high-energy "In the Stable of the Sphinx," a blazing showcase for electric guitar, violin, tenor, and alto sax that's worth the price of admission by itself and must've been amazing to hear on stage. Mercator Projected was reissued on CD in Japan in 2000 as part of the British Rock Legend Series by Universal Music Group. AMG.

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East Of Eden - Another Eden 1975

East of Eden is a perfect illustration of the futility that England's Decca Records faced in cultivating progressive rock (apart from the Moody Blues). A critically acclaimed jazz-fusion band with a strong Eastern music influence, they were a natural for stardom during the late '60s; indeed, they might've taken the wind out of the sails of the Mahavishnu Orchestra very fast, but they never became more than a cult act in England, with a strong local following in London, especially on the underground scene, even as they attracted serious audiences in continental Europe. The band was formed in Bristol in 1967 by Dave Arbus (flute, sax, trumpet), Ron Caines (alto sax), and Geoff Nicholson (guitar, vocals). Caines and Nicholson had previously played together in an R&B-based band, and the Caines and Arbus had been playing together for a couple of years. Future Wings member Geoff Britton was their original drummer, although the group's rhythm section was never an essential focus of their work, and they went through quite a few musicians. Arbus had been trained in the violin, but it wasn't until he saw Jean-Luc Pontyplaying on-stage in Paris that he realized the possibilities that the amplified instrument offered. He added the electric violin to his repertoire, greatly broadening the band's range and sound, and the following year, they moved to London.
The group was signed to Decca's progressive rock imprint Deram label in 1968, and cut two LPs, Mercator Projectedand Snafu, of which the latter made it into the British Top 30, while a single, "Ramadhan," got to number two in France. Their one big hit in England, "Jig-a-Jig," made the Top Ten there and became something of a stylistic albatross around the band's neck, since it didn't resemble their usual sound or anything else they normally played. Caines and Nicholson left the band as the '70s began, and Arbus kept it together. They jumped to the Harvest label, but their work there never caught on, coinciding as it did with a change in style and a veering away from Eastern music to a country-ish sound. Arbus left in the early '70s and was replaced by future Rory Gallagher collaborator Joe O'Donnell. The band carried on through the mid-'70s as almost exclusively a European act, recording and releasing albums in Europe only. The three original core members reunited in 1999 for the recording and release of the album Kalipse, which was followed by two additional albums after the turn of the century, Armadillo (2001) and Graffito (2004). AMG.

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