According to their Discogs page, Satin Whale are from "Cologne/Köln", Germany. However, their German Wikipedia entry says their origin is North Rhine-Westphalia. So take from that what you will. According to their Wikipedia entry, they started as a trio in 1971 consisting of Thomas Brück (bass/vocals), Horst Schättgen (drums/vocals), and Gerald Dellmann (keyboards). By the release of their debut 'Desert Palaces', they had expanded into a quartet with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Dieter Roesberg (guitar/flute/alto-sax/vocals), distributed by the one-and-only Brain record label. Now, about the actual album....
The first thing that struck me about this release was the intricacy of the arrangements, packed with such beautiful melodies, almost reminiscent of the 60s garage/psych sound. Track one, also the title track will hit you with Roesberg's gliding Jethro Tull-esque flute, elevated with the colorful sustained notes of Dellmann's psychedelic keyboard. These stop abruptly at about the 1:20 minute mark into a another section that explodes into a multi-colored rainbow of guitar, bass, drums and synth. Less than halfway through this almost 7 minute title track you got some incredibly lush blues guitar soloing, followed by our first vocals. Unfortunately there is no documentation on these lyrics that I can find on the internet but luckily they are audible enough. We get more heartfelt melodies, each element making its own unique contribution. Somewhere in this vocal section I think I hear that the keyboard player has switched to vibraphone. The overall impressions I get just from this first track are vibrant melodies awash in the dreaminess of phasers and colorful blues chords. The drums chug along to all of this, keeping precise time to all these different sections. I can already tell this band has truly got some special kind of synergy going on.
The momentum from that first track only picks up with track 2 'Seasons of Life.' I cannot make out all the lyrics but the ones I can are simply beautiful motifs about sunshine and the changing of seasons. From here I will spare you all a concise breakdown of every song and instead provide with some overall observations.
One thing I really love about the krautrock scene was the free spirit of the drums. These are a refutation of the conventional "good solid backing" that so many Rock band setups seem to prefer. The drummer in this band manages to let his heart soar with dense, ever changing rhythms while at the same time not intruding on the other instruments. I should also mention that this album is VERY well mixed, which I think has a lot to do with that. Schättgen provides for a powerful driving rhythm that accents the end of each section with a PUNCH. Not an easy task considering the sheer complexity of these song structures.
A word about the vocals. I don't often prefer that vocalists crossover into languages outside their native tongue, as it often comes out sounding a bit stiff or awkward. However, I take exception to these vocals (Roesberg's?), as they have both great English lyrics and better than average annunciation. The singing still comes off as a bit stiff in its expressiveness but not enough to really bother me all that much.
Overall, Satin Whale's debut is an incredibly dense and soulful album based heavily on colorful blues melodies, chock full of guitar solos backed by the sustained notes of the keyboard. I think their sound manages to achieve this while at the same time retaining a degree of accessibility, their Garage rock influences remaining prominent throughout. I can imagine this kind of style proving to be too overwhelming for some who prefer a more refined, simplistic style of song writing in their psychedelic rock. If that is the case, I would not recommend this album. But for those who crave a positive psychedelic journey into the intricacies of rainbow kaleidoscopic prog-blues melodies, this is the album for you. 9/10
