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Om

A Retrospective

ECM 985 7452

Culled from their four studio albums (the last, Cerberus, appears in its entirety), this retrospective showcases a band, formed in Lucerne in 1972, named after a Coltrane album but inspired by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, that is still championed as something of a pioneer in its field, jazz-rock.

It's easy to see why: in addition to sinuous, slightly dark-sounding soprano slithering over shuffling beats (reminiscent of Soft Machine), the album also contains material that might easily have come either from a contemporary John McLaughlin album (Extrapolation the most obvious example, courtesy of its contrast between slashing, clanging guitar chords and sonorous horn sounds) or from a percussion-heavy prototypical 'world music' album.

Textural variety and free improvisation, too, figure more prominently than in much contemporary jazz-rock, so overall Om (saxophonist Urs Leimgruber, guitarist Christy Doran, bassist Bobby Burri and drummer Fredy Studer) are, as their advocates claim, very much sui generis despite the parallels pointed up above, and anyone interested in the genre should investigate this value-for-money (over 70 minutes long) compilation.