Frob

Their name doesn’t quite sit right, sounding somewhere between an amphibian and a slang term for trouble, and these non-Krautrocking Germans’ only album lands in a similar liminal space. This self-titled 1976 effort sits on the boundary between heavy prog rock and jazz. No vocals to ruin the experience, just four musicians (on guitar, keys, bass, and drums) bouncing off each other. The compositions feel epic but these pros keep them tight, nothing clocking in at over seven minutes. Instead, they’re stuffed full of head-spinning displays of instrumental interplay that lends each tune a tension more akin to what you’d find in an Italian movie score from the time than the abstract experiments of their countrymen. The song titles, both English and German, describe the contents well: “Calypso” plays with some lively rhythms (if not exactly tropical), “Locomotive” plows forward like one, “Hektik” needs no translation. Another one of those obscure gems with only a thousand originally pressed, Frob hits right in the sweet spot.