\t\t\t\tSpiritual enlightenment descended upon Nottinghill Gate in 1969 when Ram Jam alias Ron Rothfield formed the esoteric Quintessence. Members included ex Unknown Blues vocalist Phil Jones (Shiva Shankar) keyboards, ex Confusion Allan Mostert lead guitar \/ Veena, Sitar, Maha Dev rhythm guitar, Shanbhu Baba bass, ex Junior\u2019s Eyes Jake Milton drums & Dave Balen tablas. (Mostert\u2019s previous Confusion included future Strider guitarist Gary Grainger) Quintessence gigs were normally opened with sitar\/tabla set coupled with Surya, the Indian dancer who played tamboura on Blissful Company and the 2nd Album. The group were all part of a \u2018Sai Baba Ashram\u2019 headed by Swami Ambikanada that regularly gigged at Portobello\u2019s \u2018All Saints Hall\u2019 expounding Mahavishnu freeform.<\/p>\n
Quintessence would eventually evolve to the \u2018Albert Hall\u2019 and be invited to the \u2018Montreux Jazz Festival\u2019. In essence the group were the English answer to the Grateful Dead with Allan paying continual homage to Jerry Garcia\u2019s guitar style. Live performances were strengthened by Greenwich flautist Ron Rothfield as in the cascading \u201cPrisms\u201d. Mostert\u2019s ragas define the core of these devotees reaching Nirvana on \u201cMove Into The Light\u201d with an extended anointing on \u201cSt. Pancreas\u201d and \u201cBurning Bush\u201d. The groups 1969 debut \u201cNotting Hill Gate\u201d, a tribute to informal jams was followed by the meditative Blissful Company.The groups 1970 self titled second reached #22 until supreme glory on the two in one Self \/ Indweller, warmly enhanced by the majestic \u201cWonder Of The Universe\u201d with tremors of The Rainbow Band.<\/p>\n
Spiralling Eastern intrigue scaled the jazzy \u201cFreedom\u201d and \u201cWater Goddess\u201d which culminated into the guitar severed \u201cGunga Mai\u201d single. The psychedelic Quintessence guitar breaks held their fragrance through the band produced Dive Deep. The Eastern improvised \u201cDive Deep\u201d and \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d harken to the similar sounding Sweet Smoke or Marsupilami. After five albums Quintessence disbanded with Shiva & Dev forming Kala while Raja Ram found success with The Infinity Project. Quintessence was a prayer in sound, an integral part for those that had one hand in Jesus while spiking for the truth.Crispian Mills\u2019 Kula Shaker revived their style years later.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spiritual enlightenment descended upon Nottinghill Gate in 1969 when Ram Jam alias Ron Rothfield formed the esoteric Quintessence. Members included ex Unknown Blues vocalist Phil Jones (Shiva Shankar) keyboards, ex Confusion Allan Mostert lead guitar \/ Veena, Sitar, Maha Dev rhythm guitar, Shanbhu Baba bass, ex Junior\u2019s Eyes Jake Milton drums & Dave Balen tablas. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hipplanet.com\/hip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}