BRIAN AUGER — Brian Auger's Oblivion Express (review)

BRIAN AUGER — Brian Auger's Oblivion Express album cover

Album · 1971 · Fusion

4/5 · 2011-04-25
Sean Trane

After the last throes of Trinity, Brian decided to form a new band from scratch and allow for more instrumental space in his music. And what a departure this was from the Trinity days. Here the music took a more severe turn away from his previous sound while remaining accessible, but being much more energetic as well and combined jazz and rock even further. With Dean and McIntosh as a solid rhythm section, Brian had to look for a guitarist that wouldn’t be tempted to overdo his own antics on the keyboards and eventually he chose Jim Mullen. With the artwork depicting our favourite Ogre unleashing his Oblivion Express out of his chest and straight into your face and ears, it’s easy to see that Brian is the boss with the majority of the compositions to his name. It wouldn’t be the case every time as the following Better Land (but much poorer album) is mostly penned by Mullen.

Opening on the fantastic McLaughlin’s Dragon Song, Brian’s crew is out for your throat and eardrums tight from the starting blocks, with Brian unleashing all hell from his Hammond, while Mullen backs him up quite complementarily. On the 11-mins+ Total Eclipse, however, I find that they over-stretched a bit too much the track duration: the rhythm section finds the groove almost instantly and go on to maintain for the full duration, allowing lengthy solos from Mullen and Auger. At the start of the track, Auger changes from piano to organ to electric piano, but later seem unfortunately to get his finger stuck on his Hammond. The hard-driving jazz-rock The Light gives us a chance to hear Brian’s voice, which is apt, but he’s strongly helped out by Dean and Mullen in the chorus. The track strolls on 100 MPH on the Hammond Express before fading out electronically a bit too early only to come back and add further electronics death throes.

On the flipside, Brian shows his vocal limits (and lyrical ideas all the same) with the up-tempoed On The Road, Mullen’s guitar sizzling in its middle section with our Ogre’s organ covering him from all sides. Another up-tempoed Sword has some Purple accents, especially coming from Lord’s many chord changes rather than Blackmore’s metallic riffs, Mullen’s play remaining less chunky (thankfully) than Ritchie’s. This leaves us with the anthemic eponymous track, where Brian shows that, vocals excepted, he feared nothing from crunchier guitar-lead groups. Again very much in the line of what Jon Lord would do, Brian changes chords constantly, allowing Mullen boulevards to expand and exploding his organ into saturation and leaving you the fan to lift the needle back onto that slice of wax.

Certainly one of the better hard Hammond-driven rock albums coming out of the early 70’s from England, BA’s OE is a 100 MPH album that gives no rest, bar in the longer groove of Total Eclipse. Indeed Brian’s train is one jazzier than Jon Lord’s Purple tram, but than again the tram would show more regularity in the long run and gather much more success. Definitely very close to a five star, but not quite partly because of their main weakness, the vocals.