Wednesday, July 9, 2025

HAYENA BAND – Live In Studio '77 (no label, 2023; rec. 1977)

 
Instrumental
International relevance: ***

This is just about as obscure as it gets as this album doesn't even exist, only just a little. (Don't let the ringwear and price tag on the cover fool you.)

Hayena Band was a West Coast sextet that only ever released one track, on Caprice Records various artists comp ”Tvärsnitt (10 Unga Svenska Jazz- Och Rockgrupper 1978)” where they shared space with bands like Kattegatt, Boojwah Kids and Alter Ego (a.k.a. Alter Echo). After Hayena Band disbanded in 1978, two of the members – drummer Werner Modiggård and saxophonist Claes Carlsson – eventually ended up in Eldkvarn. The track on ”Tvärsnitt” is ”Puerto Tune” taken from a full length 1977 studio session held at Swedish Radio Gothenburg, and that session is what was sneaked out to various streaming platforms in 2023 as ”Live In Studio '77”.

The style is Latin infused jazz rock, and while that may not sound too appealing, this is not your usual dreary funk fusion. It's very intense and powerful with fiery guitars and hard blowing sax. It simply rocks hard! This band must have been a real firebomb on stage if they could work up such a frenzy in a sterile radio studio. I don't know if there's a viable market for their kind of music, but going only by the high quality of their stuff, this is so very worthy of a proper release. It just isn't fair it should just be swept into an unlit corner of the internet. I had no idea this existed until I stumbled upon it more or less by chance, and I'm afraid most people won't do it all. And ”Live In Studio '77” deserves so much better than that. It's a gem.

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