Korai Öröm (2005)

The new album was released in September 2005. The 2000 album was recorded and mixed in 3 days, 2001 in 3 weeks, the work on this one took 2 years. The first recordings started in the house of the drummer's grandmother. Since then she has passed, and on the place of her old house there is a new building now. The band moved to different places with its sound engineer Attila Drobek and his computer. The drums and the guitars were recorded also in different studios. Guests: Nevena and Vladislava are Bulgarian folk singers. They are familiar to the band through their work with Korai's keyboard player in the Bulgarian ethno-electronic project Trigrad. Veronika is a young Hungarian jazz singer. Szabolcs Toth, playing sitar on track 6, is an old friend. He studied sitar in India, later performed in numerous music projects. On the album there is video clip inspired by the old Czechoslovak 3-wheel car called Velorex, which you can see on the cover. A band's friend is a member of the Hungarian Velorex club, driving this unique antique piece everywhere he goes. The story of the clip is a kind of conquest: the band arrives in Hungary from Siberia, meets many strange things and then leaves it to Cyberia. As a result the 2005 album is the most well-done album of Korai Öröm, full of earth beat, humor and joy. -- Korai Öröm

Péter Szalai - Guitar
Gábor Szántó - Guitar
Miklós Paizs - Fuyara, Tilinkó, Jew's Harp, Trumpet, Whistle,
Throat Singing
Emil Biljarski - Keyboards
Tibor Vécsi - Vocals
Zoltán Kilián - Bass
Viktor Csányi - Drums
János Jócsik - Percussion
Zsolt Nádasdi - Percussion

It has been a long time since the mostly instrumental Hungarian band Korai Öröm has released a studio record. Burnt Hippie Recordings, in Denmark, released their last one, Sound And Vision 2002, on vinyl. This is the band's seventh studio effort since the debut cassette tape in 1993 (later released on CD) and shows the band with quite a new, maybe more mainstream sound at times, but very much the same cool Korai Sound. The band never have any song titles on their CDs, even though they have names for all the songs (otherwise you could never refer to or make a set list for a concert). So here are track 1, 2, 3, etc, up to 8. The sound is probably the best the band has ever had with the keyboards playing a more prominent role in the sound. The opening track is a very groovy song, almost jazzy in nature. The band features 9 musicians. The first two tracks feature a guest female vocalist. This is certainly some of the best stuff the band has made. The groove at the end of track 2 is totally killer and it is great the way it segues into track 3, which starts with some flute and a cool keyboard before the heavy guitar line and percussion kicks in. Track 4 begins very spaced out as all the instruments slowly filter into the sound. It is great to hear a lot more lead guitar work on this CD than the last few. Track 5 begins with a Jew's harp and an electronic drone and then some didgeridoo as well and is a sort of interlude track that leads into track 6, which is a very catchy track with an almost ska-like guitar. Track 7 is some sort of strange pop disco gypsy thing, which makes little sense. Track 8 features a sitar and some cool flute playing and an awesome track develops after the strange Hungarian vocals at the beginning. -- Scott Heller (Aural Innovations#32, Nov. 2005)


Their ability to fuse psychedelic rock, Eastern-European folk influences and shamanist tradition is stunning. The ingredients of this rich mixture are tribal percussion, pagan flutes, shamanist trance rock, ambient soundscapes, bizarre Hungarian voices harmonizing with burning guitar leads; it's all in there. The music of Korai Öröm is overwhelming, visionary and at the same time humane, natural, mindexpanding... real earth psychedelics. -- Crohinga Well (Belgium)


The group was formed in 1994. Their musical style is special and hard to describe, but surely will merit the attention of real music fans. It is essential for them to complement their music by using visual and special effects. They create their unique sound with a brilliant combination of synthesiser, drum, percussion, guitar, bass, pipe, Jew's Harp, bells, didgeridoo and marimba. -- Periferic Records

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