Sweet Smoke

Sweet Smoke was a band that kinda just came and went by. They never really garnered a lot of attention during their prime but they did record three albums (two studio and one live) during their interesting but short career.

The band was formed in US but they eventually moved to Germany where they lived in a commune. So basically they lived out their lives being hippies, eastern philosophy enthusiasts etc. while playing gigs around their town. Eventually someone from EMI came along and gave them a record contract. The contract produced their first album called Just A Poke.

Just a Poke is a +30 min jam which defines their sound/style pretty well. The band does not do regular song structures or lengthy prog passages. This sounds to me a lot like a really fine tuned jam session where each musician gets plenty of room to improvise and interact with other musicians. There is a structure here albeit very open and free but the music is still very melodic and in tune. There's no "out there" experimentation or free improvisation adventures. Everything actually gels very well together, the vocals occasionally pop in to sing a verse or two but the main focus is on soloing and having fun.

So now that they had a record and now that the record was really well made you would expect great things to come for this band. Sadly not much happened. The group just kinda dilly dallied around the world. Some went to India, some went home and some stayed in Germany.

Eventually they managed to realize that their album was actually good (Wikipedia mentions German tourists in Nepal telling them how popular they are). So after that interesting encounter they went back to Germany and recorded their second album called Darkness to Light.

Darkness to Light was in a similar vein to their first one but it had a much more commercial appeal. For starters the album was now segmented into proper songs and the vocals became a little more prominent. Although the songs were relatively short the album still has two +10 minute jams which are both really good and greatly improve the overall quality of the album. On here you can also hear some Indian influences that the band brought back from their trip. So while this album had filler songs the overall experience is still pretty much worth your time. Most of the fillers aren't that obnoxious anyway.

After this record the band again split up doing various travels and such. A year later the same company that did their albums recorded their last performance live and put it out as an album. This album was simply called Sweet Smoke Live.

This one is my favorite one from their short lived discography as it lets them do whatever they want and play however long they want. None of the songs here were on previous albums so all of the songs are new or unrecorded. With that you also get two jams at the beginning and at the end. During the first jam they do a cover of The Creator Has a Master Plan which is fucking amazing and should not be missed.

Anyhow, here are the links for all three albums:

Just a Poke
Darkness To Light
Sweet Smoke Live