Biography

Birmingham, England's Bachdenkel recorded just two albums in their nearly decade-spanning run during the late '60s and most of the '70s, landing on a sound that was complex enough to qualify as prog but still had flashes of melody and powerful hard rock chops. The band broke up in 1977 but were long championed as a lost gem of the psychedelic scene of their time, and their two studio albums were filled out with demos, live performances, and other previously unreleased material on 2022 anthology collection Rise and Fall. The origins of Bachdenkel began in 1967, when guitarist/vocalist/bandleader Colin Swinburne and bassist Peter Kimberley formed the band The U (Don't) No Who (sometimes known as U No Who) with several other musicians. This band eventually morphed into Bachdenkel when drummer Brian Smith came on board and everyone but Kimberley and Swinburne dropped out. With engineer/additional musician Karel Beer, the group relocated to Paris, where they began developing a sound that eventually evolved from the pop-adjacent hippie psychedelia of the time into a more progressive rock style. The band's debut album, Lemmings, was recorded in 1970 but didn't see proper release until 1973. Second album Stalingrad arrived in 1977 and was even more of a departure from pop into complex and sometimes almost symphonic prog. The group split after the release of their second album, and as time went on, their music was rediscovered by fans seeking out obscure prog and psychedelic sounds. In 2022, the Grapefruit label released Rise and Fall, a compilation that included both studio albums and various other tracks dating as far back as 1967 demos from U No Who. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi