(2020) VA - Living On the Hill: A Danish Underground Trip 1967-1974


Review:
As the counterculture movements of the late 1960s rippled across various parts of the globe, each region seemed to develop its own musical response based on a collision of outside influences, regional characteristics, and the creative spark of mind-expanding drugs. While America and Britain are generally considered to have filled psychedelic rock’s high court, they are by no means its only vital contributors. Championed by prominent eccentrics like John Peel and Julian Cope, Denmark’s underground rock movement was a particularly fertile one, producing an array of challenging acts like Young Flowers, Ache, and Burnin’ Red Ivanhoe, all of whom get their due on Cherry Red’s excellent Living on the Hill: A Danish Underground Trip 1967-1974. As with all the British label’s archival sets, the scene’s major and minor players are exhumed and copiously annotated, from the surprisingly heavy prog leanings of Copenhagen’s Culpeper’s Orchard — check out Nils Henriksen’s muscular guitar work on “Mountain Music (Part One)” — to Day of Phoenix’s sweet folk-rock yearnings on the dreamy “Tell Me,” which sounds like a Scandinavian cousin to Fairport Convention’s “Time Will Show the Wiser.” The three-disc compilation deftly distributes its focus to the underground scene’s assorted corners from deeply cerebral head trips (try Alrune Rod’s trippy “Natskyggevej” or Secret Oyster’s “Mind Movie”) to groovy jazz-funk odysseys (Rainbow Band and Blast Furnace) and bluesy hard rock jams (Hurdy Gurdy and some of Burnin’ Red Ivanhoe’s less opulent cuts). Like a lot of experimental music, a little goes a long way, but even songs that tend to wear out their welcome retain the sense of freshness and youthful discovery that so defined this era. That music like this is still being re-examined decades later is a testament to it being one of rock’s most exciting periods, and it seems the Danes had just as much to offer as other better-known cultures.





Tracklist:

CD1
01 - Beefeaters - Night Flight
02 - Day Of Phoenix - Tell Me
03 - Young Flowers - Overture - Take Warning
04 - Savage Rose - Long Before I Was Born
05 - Burnin Red Ivanhoe - Ksilioy
06 - Alrune Rod - Natskyggevej
07 - Young Flowers - Kragerne Vender
08 - Delta Blues Band - Opus 1
09 - Day Of Phoenix - Open N-Way
10 - Rainbow Band - B. M
11 - Burnin Red Ivanhoe - Jingle Jangle Man

CD2
01 - Ache - De Homine Urbano
02 - Pan - To Get Along Alone
03 - Rainbow Band - Rainbow Song
04 - Blast Furnace - Toytown
05 - Culpeper's Orchard - Mountain Music (Part One)
06 - The Old Man & The Sea - Living Dead
07 - Savage Rose - Tapiola
08 - Rainbow Band - Living On The Hill
09 - Ache - Shadow Of A Gipsy

CD3
01 - Ache - Equatorial Rain
02 - Burnin Red Ivanhoe - Avez Vous Kaskelainen
03 - Day Of Phoenix - Paradox
04 - Midnight Sun - A La Turca
05 - Thors Hammer - Mexico
06 - Blast Furnace - Ginger Cake
07 - The Old Man & The Sea - Going Blind
08 - Secret Oyster - Fire And Water
09 - Hurdy Gurdy - Lost In The Jungle
10 - Dr Dopo Jam - Spring Theme -Summer Theme
11 - Culpepers Orchard - Classified Ads
12 - Secret Oyster - Mind Movie


Media Report:
Genre: prog-rock, psychedelic rock
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec, 16-bit PCM
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits