Time Machine

Down to a three-piece, Dzyan mutated away from vocal prog rock of the first album to explore further jazz and ethnic tonalities, with far more improvisation. The opener, "Kabisrain," with the saz predominant, trips out into Eastern modalities, drifting in a hookah haze as various acoustic stings shift out of non-linear drumming. "Magika" is a more in-your-face intense jazz-rock workout, at places locking into a tight rhythm groove before loosening back into free form. "Light Shining Out of Darkness" relaxes the pace a bit, with Marron's jazzy acoustic guitar over more of Giger's highly inventive drumming. The final title track, which took up the entire second side of the original LP, goes from eerie space-trance to hyper-aggressive guitar riffing to a lengthy passage with up-tempo rhythms and McLaughlin-like guitar licks, and finally ends with a loopy, locked rhythm groove. Existing in a no-man's land between jazz and rock, and as a pre-curser to the post-rock crowd of the '90s, Time Machine, originally from 1973, was well ahead of its time.