condition (record/cover): NM / EX
Gatefold sleeve.
Joy Unlimited grew out of a Mannheim beat group and, for a few years, became one of the more ambitious outfits of the German scene, fronted by the formidable Joy Fleming, a voice that could carry blues, soul, and prog in a single breath. Schmetterlinge (1971) was commissioned as ballet music by the Bonn city theatre, a three-part suite tracing the caterpillar's change into a butterfly as a figure for human becoming; the music fuses jazz flute, Hammond, vibraphone, and hard rock into something genuinely strange.
It appeared on Pilz, the cosmic imprint Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser ran under the wing of BASF. Fleming left soon after for a solo career that led, improbably, to the Eurovision stage. One of the label's hidden corners.
