ASSOCIATION P.C.-MAMA KUKU, LP, 1974, VARIOUS

Following Jim's post of their Erna Morena live LP and my subsequent post of their first recording (back when they were know as just Association), here's another choice selection from this international jazz rock all-star powerhouse (Toto Blanke, Pierre Courbois, Siggi Busch and Joachim Kuhn comprising the line-up here), Mama Kuku being the last of their five albums and recorded in a live collaboration with noted fusion flautist Jeremy Steig (whose wonderful album "Something Else" with Jan Hammer I'll be posting shortly). Starting out from a rather more subdued perspective than their prior outings and with Steig's delicate shadings well to the fore, the air of mystery and increased all 'round pleasure really begins here for me circa the third cut ("Dr. Hofmann"), whose glassily becalmed surface hides deep tidal flows of mystery. It's a calm quickly sundered by the bracing blast of "Ecnelis", a hard burning and stormy piece of work that presages some of the bracing sounds awaiting you on the side-long closer "Lausanne", whose aerated and winsome wiles slowly coalesce into peaks of inspired squalling.

AS AN ANONYMOUS INDIVIDUAL POINTED OUT ON THE COMMENT BOARD FOR THIS POST, IT APPEARS THAT MAMA KUKU HAS JUST BEEN REISSUED, SO I'VE PULLED THE LINK. INFO ON THE REISSUE CAN BE FOUND Here