https://rockasteria.blogspot.com/2012/07/keef-hartley-band-time-is-near-1970-uk.html
The core of Keef Hartley Band, along with Hartley and guitarist/vocalist Miller Anderson, was bassist Gary Thain. He was heavily influenced by bassist Duck Dunn from Booker T. and the MGs but, like Anderson and Hartley, possessed a clearer jazz spirit. The Time is Near... features a number of different horn and keyboard players, with its line-up settling down considerably for Overdog.
If Overdog is generally heavy, The Time is Near... is a lighter affair, with Anderson found on acoustic guitar as often as electric and songs like "Morning Rain sounding almost schizophrenic. Opening with a psychedelic reverse-attack collage of drums and horns, it's a song whose changes could find a place in the repertoire of roots rockers The Band if it weren't for Thain's funky bass line and trumpeter Henry Lowther's soul-drenched horn arrangement. "From The Window could easily have come from Motown, but the shifting tempo and more complex horn parts that ultimately resolve into a sunnier, ambling groove are indicative of greater depth and complexity.
Keef Hartley Band may not have been considered a progressive rock group by connotation, but its combination of soul, jazz, rock and folk here are progressive by stricter definition. Hartley was fortunate to find Miller, who writes all but one song on The Time Is Near.... Possessing enough grit to deliver the stronger message of the nearly ten-minute title track but equally capable of carrying the gentler classical guitar/trumpet duo of "Another Time Another Place," his voice is so versatile that these two tracks almost sound as if they're being sung by different people.
An equally versatile guitarist, he delivers a gritty, blues-drenched solo on the title track and the final part of "You Can't Take It With You, which also features a blistering saxophone solo from Lyle Jenkins during its lithely swinging 6/8 middle section. The only non-Miller track on the disc is "Premonition, an instrumental by trumpeter Dave Caswell, another fine player who seems to have disappeared without a trace. It's essentially a light two-chord vamp with a brief chorus that paves the way for strong solos from both Caswell and Jenkins.
The rhythm section team of Hartley and Thain powers the material throughout. It's hard to judge which of these two reissues is a better record since they're both so different (while remarkably still managing to sound like the same group), but The Time Is Near... gets a subtle nod for its broader mix of styles and a group sound that's as distinctive as its American counterparts, while feeling less like a group looking for a hit. Instead, Keef Hartley Band seems to have hoped that the audience would come to it, and while it had its brief moment in the spotlight, there's no musical reason why it should have been less successful than Chicago or BS&T other than the fact that it never got the international promotion it deserved. by John Kelman

Exact Audio Copy V1.0 beta 3 from 29. August 2011

EAC extraction logfile from 20. April 2014, 22:34

Hartley Band, Keef / The Time Is Near...

Used drive : HL-DT-STDVDRAM GH20NS15 Adapter: 0 ID: 0

Read mode : Secure
Utilize accurate stream : Yes
Defeat audio cache : Yes
Make use of C2 pointers : No

Read offset correction : 667
Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No
Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes
Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No
Null samples used in CRC calculations : Yes
Used interface : Native Win32 interface for Win NT & 2000
Gap handling : Appended to previous track

Used output format : User Defined Encoder
Selected bitrate : 128 kBit/s
Quality : High
Add ID3 tag : No
Command line compressor : C:\Program Files (x86)\Exact Audio Copy\Flac\flac.exe
Additional command line options : -V -8 -T "artist=%artist%" -T "title=%title%" -T "date=%year%" -T "tracknumber=%tracknr1%" -T "genre=%genre%" %source%


TOC of the extracted CD

Track | Start | Length | Start sector | End sector
---------------------------------------------------------
1 | 0:00.00 | 3:02.51 | 0 | 13700
2 | 3:02.51 | 3:29.72 | 13701 | 29447
3 | 6:32.48 | 10:12.66 | 29448 | 75413
4 | 16:45.39 | 7:22.00 | 75414 | 108563
5 | 24:07.39 | 4:26.42 | 108564 | 128555
6 | 28:34.06 | 2:37.27 | 128556 | 140357
7 | 31:11.33 | 4:01.46 | 140358 | 158478


Track 1

Filename C:\EAC\01 - Morning Rain.wav

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Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 1.7 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC AC29720F
Copy CRC AC29720F
Accurately ripped (confidence 10) [65CD6FEA] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 2

Filename C:\EAC\02 - From The Window.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:01.26

Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 1.9 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC C9213098
Copy CRC C9213098
Accurately ripped (confidence 10) [1FF88E0E] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 3

Filename C:\EAC\03 - The Time Is Near.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.21

Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 2.2 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC DD047C82
Copy CRC DD047C82
Accurately ripped (confidence 11) [039EAE26] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 4

Filename C:\EAC\04 - You Can't Take It With You.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:02.56

Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 2.7 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 54AF2952
Copy CRC 54AF2952
Accurately ripped (confidence 11) [C3F167BF] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 5

Filename C:\EAC\05 - Premonition.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:01.41

Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 2.2 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC 42EBDB6F
Copy CRC 42EBDB6F
Accurately ripped (confidence 11) [FB1436AC] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 6

Filename C:\EAC\06 - Another Time, Another Place.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:00.93

Peak level 74.3 %
Extraction speed 1.8 X
Track quality 99.9 %
Test CRC C0F54343
Copy CRC C0F54343
Accurately ripped (confidence 11) [F155FB60] (AR v2)
Copy OK

Track 7

Filename C:\EAC\07 - Change.wav

Pre-gap length 0:00:01.04

Peak level 98.8 %
Extraction speed 3.0 X
Track quality 100.0 %
Test CRC 8572C7FA
Copy CRC 8572C7FA
Accurately ripped (confidence 10) [04115B86] (AR v2)
Copy OK


All tracks accurately ripped

No errors occurred

End of status report

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