Swiss sextet, Magog, first made a splash at the Montreux Festival in 1973, with an hour-long set incorporating open stretches of free improvisation – later released as their first album. This studio follow-up, recorded the following year, finds them focusing on more concise forms, with a fine mix of styles, all convincingly executed. ‘Lock’ is groovy soul-jazz with conga bounce; ‘New Samba’ has an elastic, latin urgency; ‘Der Bachstelzer’ is hung on a Fender Rhodes chord sequence that could have been an outtake from Miles’ In A Silent Way sessions; ‘Gogam’ is nippy hard-bop; while ‘Rhoades’ approaches the same territory from a more avant-garde angle, reminiscent of Wayne Shorter’s All Seeing Eye, with Paul Haag’s trombone whinnying up a storm. ‘Sumervogel’ takes things furthest out with vocal shrieks, moans and yodels caught up in a swirling vortex of percussion and furious arco bass. Just as Ian Carr’s Nucleus was doing at the same time, Magog prove what a fertile underground jazz scene Europe had in the 1960s and 70s.