Third Ear Band evolved within the London alternative and free-music scene of the mid 1960's with members coming from The Giant Sun Trolley & The People Band to create a uniquely improvised music drawing on Eastern raga forms, European folk, experimental and medieval influences. 
They recorded their first session in 1968 for Ron Geesin which was released under the pseudonym of The National-Balkan Ensemble on one side of a Standard Music Library disk. Their first actual album, Alchemy, was released on the EMI Harvest label in 1969, (featuring John Peel playing Jew's Harp on one track), followed by Air, Earth, Fire, Water (aka Elements) in 1970. They recorded two soundtracks, the first in 1970 for an animated film by Fuchs of Abelard and Heloise (which first saw release as part of Luca Ferrari's Necromancers of the Drifting West Sonic Book in 1997) and then in 1971 for Roman Polanski's film of Macbeth. After various later incarnations & albums they finally disbanded in 1993 owing to leader & percussionist Glen Sweeney's ongoing health problems.
The unique style of Third Band is most worked out here in shorter tracks, more and brighter ideas. Most beautiful (and an absolute classic) is the song sang by a boy,"Fleance" and the bird song like passages, like "Court Dance", and the medieval inspired like passages. Oboe sound again most beautiful. A few passages are more experimental. Within the rest of the music full of clarity these little parts are not easy. This release is the music for the Roman Polanski film.
Quintessence The fifth essence. The ancient Greeks said there are four elements or forms in which matter can exist- fire, or the imponderable form; air, or the gaseous form; water, or the liquid form; and earth, or the solid form. The Pythagoreans added a fifth, which they called ether, more subtile and pure than fire, and possessed of an orbicular motion. This element, which flew upwards at creation, and out of which the stars were made, was called the fifth essence; quintessence therefore means the most subtile extract of a body that can be procured. It is quite an error to suppose that the word means an essence five times distilled, and that the term came from the alchemists. Horace speaks of "kisses which Venus has imbued with the quintessence of her own nectar.""Swift to their several quarters hasted thenThe cumbrous elements- earth, flood, air, fire;But this ethereal quintessence of heavenFlew upward ... and turned to starsNumberless as thou seest."
Review
The good points? An uncalculated, genuine wish to both reflect the era's ideals and to use its music as a tool to achieve them, as well as a willingness to blend aspects of jazz, 
The bad points? An absence of conventional songwriting chops, exacerbated by the band's tendency to ramble on in formless jam-like passages, though actually none of the tracks here exceed six minutes. Certainly it's eclectic, with a commune-like vibe permeating the proceedings, though the recording's quite professional. "Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Gauranga" sounds rather akin to the We're Only in It for the Money-era Mothers of Invention, though minus any hint of satire or irony in the over the top beatific lyrics. Overall, though, it feels a little like listening to the house rock band of a pan-religious cult that doesn't have anything of particular value to sell. The 2004 CD reissue on Repertoire adds a live version of "Jesus, Buddha, Moses, Gauranga" (originally released on the first pressing of the 1970 Island compilation Bumpers) as a bonus track.
The original line-up included Shiva Jones (voice, keys, percussion), Raja Ram (flutes, percussion), Sambhu Baba (bass, guitar), Maha Dev (guitar), Allan Mostert ((guitar), and Jake Milton (drums, percussion). Quintessence were tagged a 'spiritual' band and were playing new age rock before the term was born.
With ego clashes and problems on many frontiers, Kala quickly folded and Quintessence, now trying to make it the body without a head, and bereft of a sense of purpose, direction and being victims of the changing times, played on into the eighties, then slowly drifted into limbo.
The group's roots lay in the hippie community in the Notting Hill area, which was to London roughly what Haight-Ashbury was to San Francisco. Their breakthrough performance took place at a festival called Implosion, where they put on a good enough show to get noticed by Island Records, which signed them and got their debut LP, an elaborately packaged concept album entitled 
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