43 Minuten

Produced by Conny Plank, Germany's Os Mundi made their second album their most distinguished and resilient one, with lyrics that reflected the group's intellectualness and concern for world issues, mainly from a social standpoint rather than a political one. With Dietrich Markgraf's saxophone and flute converging on the flightiness of the organ and drum work, Os Mundi used elements of jazz, rock, and even classical to busy up their material, turning their music into animated excursions with a solid rock & roll core. The opening track, "A Question of Decision," is reminiscent of Jethro Tull's style, attaching brisk waves of flute to Arndt's high-pitched vocals with a jagged influx of drumming counterbalancing the barrage of treble. "But Reality Will Show" and "Children's Games" pertain to the Vietnam war, while "Triple" reflects the band's humanitarian leanings and liberal viewpoints in a song about the value of communal living. Os Mundi's horn play inundates the peculiarity of "Erstickubungen," a song based on a poem by Erich Fried, and the delicate cello applied to "Missile" makes the title awfully misleading. 43 Minuten presents an unrestrained, aloof jazz-rock outpouring onto some rather substantiated lyrics, which can become redundant when coincided by this many instruments, but this is definitely not the case here. No matter where the attention is directed, the album makes for a wholesome package by one of Germany's most underestimated and disregarded progressive bands. ~ Mike DeGagne|