Riff Raff - Outside Looking In: Their Unreleased Debut Album (1972) [1999] CD Rip

AllMusic Review by Thom Jurek
Riff Raff, co-led by Brit keyboard boss Tommy Eyre and bassist Roger Sutton, grew out of the Mark-Almond Band. Before meeting Jon Mark, Eyre had played with Joe Cocker's Grease Band. The pair decided to form solo projects while with Mark-Almond, and recruited vocalist Alan Marshall, drummer Kenny Slade, and guitarist Martin Ball. This lineup was never formalized, though they had recorded demos and even finished some tracks for a debut album for Richard Branson. The amalgam of jazz, rock, and soul was intoxicating and was a fine emotional alternative to the Canterbury bands, which were much more concerned with complexity than groove. The music included here features all seven of those original finished tracks as well as the first four recordings of the final band lineup after Marshall and Slade left. Guitarist Peter Kirtley and Brazilian drummer Aureo de Souza replaced them. Saxophonist Bud Beadle later joined the band as well. This is a heady, seductive brew of energetic, soulful jazz-rock -- recorded after fusion but more a real amalgam than a completely new genre of music like that of the Mahavishnu Orchestra or Miles Davis' experiments of the time. Individual tunes don't so much matter, as the album is sequenced almost as a series of segues. The interplay among soloists here and the sheer musicality separate this band from virtually everyone else on the scene at the time, with the possible exception of their former employers. This is for collectors to be sure, but it is nonetheless revelatory music and should be sought out by anyone interested in anything other than Top 40 from the era.