Early adopters in fusing jazz with R&B and the multi-hued psychedelic directions surfacing in 1967, Brian Auger and Julie Driscoll formed the forward-looking Trinity after their previous gig with Long John Baldry’s vocal-heavy Steampacket ran out of puff. Their debut album Open drew on hipper repertoire, Driscoll’s voice reaching a more gritty and commanding soul/jazz edge. Auger meanwhile, was able to cut loose with one of the most driving and dexterous Hammond organ sounds of the time, which roared through the gothic vastness and liquid light beams at Alexandra Palace when I first saw them at the Love In Festival in July 1967.

And it’s this sound that’s captured on Live at Montreux 1968, now officially released for the first time in agreeable clarity and featuring repertoire that didn’t make the band’s two studio albums. Driscoll impresses throughout, manoeuvring the subtle shifts and swing of Eddie Jefferson’s arrangement of ‘Soft and Furry’ with panache; igniting the spirit and soul of Aretha’s ‘Save Me’ and Nina Simone’s ‘Take Me To The Water’: finding a still space within Auger’s poignant piano on Richie Haven’s moving ‘Inside of Me’ and twisting the lyric of Donovan’s ‘Season of The Witch’ into an anguished jazz/blues moan.

Auger meanwhile feeds his Hammond through a Leslie and Binson Echo unit, his haunting atmospherics on the latter tune signalling a restless imagination, while his choppy signature ascending lines are already prominent as he lays the seeds of his forthcoming funkier jazz fusion on Booker T’s ‘Red Beans and Rice’ and a spirited early take on Wes Montgomery’s ‘Bumpin’ On Sunset’, still a centre-piece of his set today.

Two years later Auger was back at Montreux in 1970 with the first, short-lived line-up of Oblivion Express following Driscoll’s departure for more experimental jazz pursuits with Keith Tippett. Recorded prior to the band’s first studio album, Auger and guitarist Jim Mullen enthusiastically negotiate a work in progress between jazz, rock and funk with a rhythm section short on grease and grit.

Auger’s re-arrangement of Herbie Hancock’s ‘Maiden Voyage’ manages to retain the mood and mystery of the original’s timeless melody in this amped-up take thanks to Mullen’s long sustained lines hovering just on the edge of feedback over Auger’s rising accompaniment and expressive solo - enough to earn the praise of its composer. The other key cuts are John McLaughlin’s ‘Dragon Song’ from his Devotion album (Auger and McLaughlin played together in The Niddy Griddys in 1963) where Mullen plays heavy enough to raise eyebrows among older readers as he duels with Auger’s overdriven keys, and a spirited tilt at Eddie Harris’s ‘Listen Here’. Shortly after, the far more fluid and funky drummer Robbie McIntosh joined and Auger wisely refrained from singing as the future sound of Oblivion Express got on track.