Julliard trained keyboardist Chuck Garafoulakis put together Nevermore Evermore – a crossover unit that outmuscled most of the opposition in terms of sheer swagger, stomp and overblown ineptitude – when on a tour of Japan in the summer of 1973. His trio heard guitarist Tamiko Tamagochi jamming on a Kyoto street corner and were “imminently and judiciously blown away” (as Garafoulakis put it in an interview with Japanese jazz magazine Hai, onegaishimasu Jazz! (Yes, please Jazz!). This changed the course of the band. But a more profound influence were the teachings of North Dakota-based philosophe T. Raymond Dunlap, whose church, the Outerstellar Family Congregation, was attracting a considerable following amongst musicians, poets and artists, Garoufalakis included. Dunlap, a charismatic bit part actor with a staggering knowledge of the Shakespearian canon, is the eminence gris behind this jaw-dropping concept album, recorded live at the Bismarck Auditorium. The spirit of the Swan of Avon hovers over the proceedings in track titles lifted straight from the Bumper Book of Bardic Burblings: things open with the louche ‘Silken Dalliance’, all swooning synth, brooding bass belches and Tamagochi’s jangly urgings (sounding like Al DiMeola but with fewer fingers). This segues into ‘Lascivious Pleasings’, Haverkampenstan’s frisking Teutonic backbeat ramping up the urgency and the band playing with all the abandon of a cocker spaniel running amok at a James Last gig. Garafoulakis then brings things down to a simmer with some basso profundo left hand rumblings and turns a corner from the broad thoroughfare of funk into the dark alleyway of ponderous posturings and a track entitled ‘Troublous Dreams’. Things wrap up with ‘Basest Beggars’, an earthy, funksome outing that sets up a genuinely infectious groove, cut short after 25 minutes when bassist Reggie Podmore (a kind of ‘Flat Stanley’ Clarke) overdoes the ‘slap’n’pop’ and loses a thumb. “Sound and fury” my friend, “sound and fury”. And we all know what that signifies…