2003/07/19
Embryo once again make crazy music in Darmstadt
....Instead of exploring local herb garden landscapes, they are more like wanderers between worlds. They have been on the road for over 30 years now, be it in the Maghreb, the Middle East or India....
The seven musicians stand or sit on stage, eyes closed, bent over their instruments, their long hippy manes in their faces. A huge array of instruments is spread out around them, including nay, oud, electric guitar, violin, vibraphone, marimba and drums. Embryo pieces are long, sprawling music trips, oscillating between Arabic teahouse sounds and spacey jazz freakouts a la Sun Ra, sometimes meditative, suddenly loud, weird, then smooth again, with a funky groove as a foundation.
Alongside Burchard and ex-Amon Düül guitarist Chris Karrer, one Embryo newcomer stands out: Mik Quantius. Flattened on the stage floor, he listens silently, holds back and suddenly breaks out into wild singing. He shakes his head as if he is possessed and sings while moving his finger in his mouth. The result is a shimmering sound that seems to be out of this world. Then he screams, inarticulate words, with a voice somewhere between Jim Morrison and Tom Waits.
Miles Davis supposedly once said of Embryo: “They're creative, good musicians who just play crazy stuff.” If he said it, he was right.
Frankfurter Rundschau, 2003/07/22
“Embryo” - avant-garde of the seventies: The Munich band at the Oetinger Villa.
by Marc Mandel
Darmstadt. “We're drowning in music demos,” says Dirk Neureuther of the self-managed youth center Oetinger Villa. “Hundreds of bands want to play here. It's not that easy to choose”. In the case of the German band “Embryo”, this was obviously not a problem. Since their formation in 1969, the group led by dulcimer player Christian Burchard has released 22 albums, all of which are now available on CD. In addition, the Munich formation stands for “Kraut-Rock” like no other in the world music scene. On Saturday evening, “Embryo” performed at the Oetinger Villa.
At first, Lothar Stahl just seems to be strumming away on the marimba. This also applies to Max Weißenfeldt on the drums. Christian Schmidhofer accompanies rather subtly on the thavil drum, and Burchard elicits playful sequences from the dulcimer. By the time Jens Pollheide starts improvising on the flute, you know that the concert has long since begun. Chris Karrer (violinist of Amon Düül lI) plays the Arabic lute Oud while singer Mik Quantius is still lying on the floor. The group's meditation music is unusually quiet by today's standards, and movement and emotion seem to be more important than clarity.
The Germans were called "Krauts" by the Americans because of their alleged fondness for sauerkraut. In the sixties, however, “Kraut” also meant "weed". The category “kraut rock” developed from both meanings for the German underground bands of the seventies. The harmonic basis is usually a single basic chord, which in the case of “Embryo” is formed by the hammered dulcimer and marimba in the form of recurring melodic modules. The remaining “Embryos” give many people the feeling that they can play along straight away - but the precisely drawn world music grooves and odd time signatures make the high level of professionalism clear even to the average listener.
Alongside the band leader, singer Mik Quantius is the defining musical personality of the group “Embryo”. He uses his voice like an instrument. During the entire concert, he sits cross-legged on stage and smokes one cigarette after the other. His singing usually corresponds with the violin, guitar or flute; sometimes he gurgles into his microphone and also modulates with his palm and fingers. His facial muscles work without pause and his facial expressions speak so clearly that "Embryo" is accessible to viewers of different cultures even without words. The former avant-garde sounds surprisingly unspoiled.
Darmstädter Echo, 2003/07/21
Source: embryo.de, 2003