We gave away a handful of these on Record Store Day, the most recent release from local SF psychedelic space rock minimalists 3 Leafs, and if you came by aQ on the Sunday after RSD, you might have caught them performing live in the shop (with a very special guest for part of the show, one year old Brix on the keyboard). But if you missed out on the free copies, and seeing 3 Leaves live, fear not, we now have copies for sale of En Super Forme, a live set recorded back in 2011 at Amnesia, right down the street from aQ. And while most 3 Leafs records are recorded live, and are thus essentially live records, much editing is involved before we get to lay our ears on it. So it's exciting to hear what these guys can manage in a live setting, no editing at ALL. And as you might not be surprised to discover, they sound much like they do on their records, if anything a bit more loose and loud. In this case definitely loud, cuz there was much talking going on in the crowd, and while the band started off quietly, the sound darkly rhythmic and peppered with field recordings, almost like an orchestra tuning up, it really only took a couple minutes for all the pieces to fall into place, the dubbed out bass, the busy skittery krautrock drumming, the thick billowing clouds of chordal shimmer, the Necks vibe we've mentioned in other reviews in full effect, spidery guitars, the sound exploding in little psychedelic squalls, while the rhythm section remains locked tight. About ten minutes in, the vocals (by Tim Cohen, also of The Fresh & Onlys, etc.) come in, a dark reverby croon, that here definitely have a bit of a Doors vibe, slipping into a falsetto before fading out.
The rest of the set unfurls similarly, the drums busy and tribal, gorgeous Eastern sounding guitar melodies drifting over sinewy basslines, and soft swirls of effects, the vocals giving the sound a definite pop vibe, but a sort of drifty psych pop vibe, in fact, the second track sounds a bit like a more blissed out Animal Collective in places, strangely enough, while the third track is very krautrocky, and very dubby too, a sort of krautdub, not funky necessarily, but certainly groovy. And finally, the band do their "Guacamole Window" from Canal Smarts, and it's the most propulsive of the bunch, reminding us at times of Tortoise, at times of This Heat, a sort of post punk psych jam, super rhythmic, and a killer closer. As always fantastic stuff. And thus highly recommended.
Yet another chapter in the 39 Clocks saga, Subnarcotic being the band's second album, originally released in 1982, and now reissued. The German duo appears to be operating at full blast here, with the liner notes in fact quoting our own review of the band's career spanning anthology Zoned, wherein we postulated 1982 as perhaps the "boys' most fertile drug period"!
The greatest thing about 39 Clocks is how blissfully - or maybe nihilistically - out of touch they are with the 1980s, and if this band had formed at any point within the last five years, they would be ruling the garage punk scene, no question. An innate understanding of rhythm is one of their greatest strengths, informing pretty much everything you hear from the slashing guitars to the buzzing organs to the heavily accented German vocals. They sound equally at home with a drum machine or a real drummer, and the shambolic approach to songcraft seems to draw as much from their krautrock predecessors as it does from the Velvet Underground, the Godz, and the harder side of the Nuggets spectrum. They know how to launch into a sleazy groove and gussy it up with dark psychedelic flourishes while rarely being anything other than really fucking catchy. Plus, they look like a couple of badasses, dark shades and Beatle Boots, rail thin with messy hair and pseudonyms indebted to LSD. The live bonus track of the song "Past Tense Hope & Instant Fears On 42nd Street" gives a perfect idea of their animalistic power onstage. Subnarcotic is another tantalizing glimpse into the world of this strange and amazing band, and we're already jonesing to hear more!
Well, this is certainly a strange one, in the best of ways. It probably goes without saying that most of you have never heard of 39 Clocks. We sure hadn't. But one day a promo copy of Zoned showed up and pretty much knocked us on our asses. Who was this strange band that sounded like the Modern Lovers on Quaaludes with the guy from Faust singing? It wasn't until we received the actual album that we figured we could go about piecing together a loose history of this obscure German duo...but the liner notes, not to mention a dearth of information online (the gist of it all is that they seemed to stir shit up), do little except make it abundantly clear that these weirdos will remain a mystery. Without any external details to worry about, we can instead focus on what matters most: the music, natch!
We're sure plenty of you remember the killer Onna 7" Holy Mountain reissued a few months ago. Well, if Onna were a couple of German dudes who set their sights on reinterpreting '60s proto-punk with an unhealthy amount of dissonant NOISE and a smart ass sense of humor, they might have sounded a bit like 39 Clocks. The band pumps out catchy songs based on simple riffs and wraps them in ungodly noise, the results sounding like they were recorded in some grimey, post-industrial slaughterhouse. Like Onna, 39 Clocks appear as a total anomaly during the 1980s, and these selected recordings, represented chronologically backwards from 1987-1980, are a delightfully confusing, slightly disturbing example of psychedelia's true legacy during a time when many bands were participating in a rather unfortunate psych revival based on superficial and idealized evaluations of the 1960s - you know, just like today. 39 Clocks, instead, were damaged, druggy, and fully willing to emphasize repetitive, droning grooves that submerge themselves deep within your sick brain. Time is kept with primitive drum machines (and occasionally real drums) and, not surprisingly, the rhythmic flow is heavily indebted to many of their Krautrock predecessors. At various other points, the band conjures everyone from Suicide to the Velvet Underground to Syd Barrett's solo work. But when the smoke clears, 39 Clocks are very much their own fucked up band.
The flow of this anthology is surprisingly fluid, the unifying thread being 39 Clocks' skewed approach to music making. On "My Tears Will Drown The World", the first and possibly most "normal" song on the album, acoustic guitars accompany deadpan vocals with sustained guitar drones, as brilliantly sampled orchestral movements and percussion provided by the sounds of soldiers marching send things into another dimension. The demented "78 Soldier Dead" thrashes about drunkenly before unexpectedly switching into the riff to "Sweet Jane". They even offer a totally warped cover of "Twist & Shout", all detached and super German, somehow finding the ability to take all the sweat and emotion out of a frantic crowd pleaser, making it almost clinical. The song begins to sound like it is coming to life with an overblown guitar playing the main melody before everything is overtaken by earsplitting feedback. Elsewhere we find extensive use of trashy guitars in the vein of Pussy Galore, some wailing harmonicas, and hilarious but acidic lyrics conveying a nihilistic interpretation of recent world history (probably that whole being from Germany thing...) The songs represented from 1982 seem to indicate the boys' most fertile drug period, as the mostly 7+ minute songs bring to mind shambolic '60s punks the Godz, meaning a heavy emphasis on noise and atonality which may or may not be as intellectual as some people make it out to be, but kills nonetheless.
Wrapping up this review makes it clear how difficult it is trying to accurately describe a band like 39 Clocks. We realize how often we used the word "noise" in this review, and even comparisons to other bands can't really evaluate the unique vibe of this album. It certainly won't be for everyone, but we know their are enough adventurous aQ customers who will totally love this expansive collection of bizarre rockers. In fact, your assessment of whether or not this is for you could be based on how you respond to lyrics like "I'm the best of all genetic chimps". We dig.
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An anthology of the hypnotic output of this krautrock/electronica pioneer, taken from albums spanning the years 1971 to 1975. Beautiful, rhythmic stuff, way ahead of its time. For fans of Frippertronics, Cluster, Neu, Kraftwerk, Can, and (more recently) Kriedler. Not new, but we just got a few of this fantastic disc at a bargain price, so we thought we'd list it, get it while you can. We've had it before for 19 bucks and it was worth it at that price too!
Recently we listed a cd by Diza Star & The Pink Ladies Blues, the French/Japanese psych band formerly known as Acid Mothers Temple & The Pink Ladies Blues, entitled Featuring Mani Neumeier. That particular personage being the drummer from '70s krautrock legends Guru Guru. Well, the REAL Acid Mothers Temple couldn't let their Pink Ladies pals & doppelgangers get away with scooping 'em on jamming with Mr. Guru Guru himself. So here's AMT's Makoto Kawabata (guitar) and Atsushi Tsuyama (bass) teamed up in a cream-dream power trio with ol' Mani. Together they unleash a whole hour of long, lumbering, loud, out-there psychedelic rock, five tracks total, mostly improvised live but winding up with a wild version of the Guru Guru classic "Bo Diddley". We bet Kawabata and Tsuyama were grinning stupidly for weeks afterwards.
Here's two long time AQ Krautrock favorites - the first and second albums by Berlin band Agitation Free - that have been previously available as cds on the Spalax, and then on Garden Of Delights labels. But now krautrock reissuers Revisited have done even newer reissues, which is great 'cause we LOVE these records and we're glad of an excuse to list 'em again, especially since the previous edition has been unavailable for some time now. Also, Revisited has found some bonus tracks to include on each!!
The ethnic influence that so defined Agitation Free's debut is not as much a factor on 1973's Second - but both the West Coast style guitar jamming AND the way-out-there electronics experimentation really come to the fore. Again, mostly instrumental (one exception being the ominous, electronically treated reading of an Edgar Allen Poe poem that forms the last track, backed by gloomy Mellotron-led prog rock), psychedelic, trippy stuff, utterly gorgeous. Electronically created environmental sounds, wild and spacey synths, and relaxed, melodic guitar are all to be found here in abundance. Second was the second great album from this brilliant, often overlooked, Krautrock band. After Second they departed the scene with their excellent swansong live album, Last (not yet reissued by Revisited), though some other posthumous live/archival documents have subsequently been released as well.
The bonus track included here is "Laila '74", a nearly 8 minute live version of the album track(s).
Not too long ago we reviewed the recent reissues (on the Garden of Delights label) of the first two albums by this AQ-beloved krautrock band, an outfit up there with Pink Floyd, Ash Ra Tempel, Wishbone Ash, Can, Guru Guru, etc. in our book of cool '70s psych/prog.
Recorded live in 1973 and '74, and then originally released in '76, this is Agitation Free's third album (and, at the time, final album -- though there's been other posthumous live/archival releases since then). We thought since everybody likes their first two so much we ought to tell you about "Last"! Basically, if you liked the wide-open, psychedelic jamming guitars and electronic experimentation of Agitation Free's "Malesch" or "Second" you'll want to check this one out too. The three cosmic, spacey instrumental tracks here include a version of the lovely "Laila II" from their second album, and bits from their first. And track three, the VERY spacey, minimalist rock of "Looping IV" (which, at 23 minutes, covered the original LP's entire B-side), will lull you into a beatific trance just as well as anything by today's expert space/drone bands like Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Landing, or Kinski...
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They got their start as a hippie commune band, with ties to Guru Guru, Tangerine Dream, and Amon Duul. Their debut, "Malesch" (Arabic for "it doesn't matter, take it easy"), is a true cosmic Krautrock classic, blending the spacey psych of Pink Floyd and fellow krautrockers Ash Ra Tempel and Popul Vuh with a flair for Eastern "exoticism". Plus, in the intertwining guitars, you'll find some hints of the American West Coast psych sound (yes, even a little Grateful Dead -- but don't let that scare you off). The album was recorded in 1972 not long after the band was sent on a tour of the Middle East by the Goethe Institute, and incorporates field recordings (decades before the likes of Godspeed You Black Emperor!) from their trip: the bustle of Cairo streets, desert winds, calls to prayer, friendly airline pilots... These tapes are a key element of this record's appeal (along with their sheer talent for jamming and their synth and electronic experimentation). Oh, and some great Hammond organ sounds too. Basically, this is a fantastic album of mostly instrumental psych / drone / ethnic rock, that's generally mellow but powerful too. Whether to the Great Pyramids of Egypt (where the album cover was shot) or to inner space, "Malesch" portrays a true trip indeed. So recommended.
The ethnic influence that so defined Agitation Free's debut is not as much a factor on 1973's "Second" -- but both the West Coast style guitar jamming AND the way-out-there electronics experimentation really come to the fore. Again, mostly instrumental (one exception being the ominous, electronically treated reading of an Edgar Allen Poe poem that forms the last track, backed by gloomy Mellotron-led prog rock), psychedelic, trippy stuff, utterly gorgeous. Electronically created environmental sounds, wild and spacey synths, and relaxed, melodic guitar are all to be found here in abundance. "Second" was the second great album from this brilliant, often overlooked, Krautrock band. After "Second" they departed the scene with their excellent swansong live album, "Last" (not yet reissued by Garden of Delights, but still available on Spalax), though some other posthumous live/archival documents have subsequently been released.
I'd like to thank whomever was working the counter at Rockit Scientist in NYC, one day when I happened to visit that very cool East Village record shop a couple years ago. 'Cause they happened to be spinning an LP reissue of this, the lone album by obscure krautrock act Ainigma. Never had heard of 'em before, but they made an impression, as I'm a sucker for all early heavy progressive '70s sounds. And for the time it was originally released (1973) these guys were pretty heavy, though it's definitely an low-budget, basement sort of underground production. Especially heavy is the 17 minute title track, which even includes about a minute and a half of drum solo! Shades of Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"! Also as per Iron Butterfly, there's a LOT of organ on this album, swirling and chunking amid the wailing guitar and pounding drums. No surprise then that the REALLY big influence on these teenage Bavarian lads was Vincent Crane's Atomic Rooster, along with other organ-based heavies out of the UK back then like Uriah Heep and Deep Purple. But Ainigma's take on those sounds was definitely waaay fuzzed and garagey-punk, and also quite jammy, more instrumental than vocal oriented.
So ever since that day at Rockit Scientist I'd been hoping for a cd reissue to materialize, and now at last Garden Of Delights has done the job, giving it their usual swank treatment (two bonus tracks plus thick booklet w/ German and English liner notes, lyrics, band photos, and even pictures of -previous- reissues of this record!), nice!
No, not the '80s metal band, featuring Yngwie -- that Alcatrazz had two zz's in their name. This Alcatraz was a krautrock outfit from Hamburg, who released this album, their debut, in 1972. At last it gets a cd reissue -- we've always been curious about 'em 'cause the striking/silly LP cover painting (the lips and teeth of a vampire, with the bloody fangs being two inverted Empire State Buildings) always shows up in books of krautrock lore like Cosmic Dreams At Play and The Crack In The Cosmic Egg. AND, they're one of those Nurse With Wound list bands too! In fact, Nurse With Wound and Stereolab 'covered' this album's brilliant lead-off track "Simple Headphone Mind" on a collaborative ep some years back.
Alcatraz prove to be one of those wildly jamming, kinda-heavy bands, with some bluesy Zeppelin-esque riffing and powerful, fuzz-psych lead guitar (love that tone!) cutting through their fusionoid, jazzily-rockin' songs, which also feature sax, flute, piano, drums, bongos, and (on two tracks only) vocals. Reminds us of some way-out Traffic or Santana type of thing. Really, the mostly instrumental songs on here don't really sound like 'songs', just a lot of improv parts and crazy playing, which is of course cool by us. It totally makes sense that they started out playing covers of stuff by the likes of Savoy Brown, Vanilla Fudge, Black Sabbath, and Uriah Heep before getting into Soft Machine and Tony William's Lifetime -- the liner notes mention 'em blending Cannonball Adderly and Deep Purple!
While by no means a newly unearthed krautrock classic of Can or Faust proportions (though it was recorded at Faust's Wumme studio, during a police raid on suspected terrorists no less), this is a cool album of eccentric, sometimes epic, hippy jazz-rock. Reissued from the master tapes, with bonus track, and the aforementioned liner notes in both German and (more-or-less) English.
Horrendously expensive new vinyl reissue of this krautrock semi-classic...
Originally released back in 1971, Tanz Der Lemminge was the third album from the second incarnation of Amon Duul. Where the first incarnations of Amon Duul (along with Amon Duul I, there was supposedly an Amon Duul 0 from the mid-'60s) had much more of a anarchist / socio-political bent, Amon Duul II was the vehicle for the more musically minded folk from the collective, fully embracing the sonic potential of psychedelia. Oftentimes under-appreciated in comparison to the Krautrock triumvirate of Neu!, Can, and Faust, Amon Duul II had more than a fair share of moments that could rival the works of those three! That said, Tanz Der Lemminge may be one of the lesser works from Amon Duul II, but is still better than most of their Krautrock comtemporaries. This album is a sprawling psychedelic mess of free-form songs that filter early-Pink Floyd space-folk wispiness through some occasionally heavy prog leanings. Of particular note is the epic improv track "The Marilyn Monroe-Memorial-Church" as a meandering freakout with lots of organs, pianos, and phasing guitars that will make fans of Acid Mother's Temple very happy. "anz Der Lemminge is recommended only after you've fallen in love with Yeti and Phallus Dei, which totally kick ass.
There's at least one good song on this mid-'70s AD album, but it's more of a soft folky pop number that you wouldn't guess was these guys.
Split apart from the more politicized fraction known as Amon Duul I (Psychedelic Underground, etc.), Amon Duul II emerged in 1969 when they released this fantastic debut album. It's a masterwork of drug-dazed guitar psych, long tracks, middle eastern
Seminal Krautrockers Amon Duul II are captured here on film doing what the title says, playing their debut (and perhaps 2nd best, next to their masterpiece Yeti) album. It's about a half-hour long, a psychedelic transmission from a far off time and place: Munich, Germany 1968. Fans probably need this, but we should give you a little more info. First off, it's more of an art film (Wim Wenders was one of the cinematographers!) than a live-in-concert document. In fact, while the soundtrack is very definitely a live performance of the mind-blowing hippie hoedown that Phallus Dei is, it's not exactly synched to what you see the band doing on the screen -- they're two different performances of the same material. Apparently the reason the audio and visual don't match up is because the band refused to stop playing, or do anything over, even when some of the cameras malfunctioned. So edits were necessary. But in a way it doesn't matter -- the weird disconnect just makes this all the more psychedelic, as you hear the violin before the musican starts playing it, or the bongos continue even when the drummer stops to get his hair out of his face. Not that this needs much help to be super psychedelic -- the colorful light show alone will trip you out, superimposed as it is over the long haired hippies in the band grooving out. Messing with your mind still further, the first part of the film (after a lovely opening sequence of the rising sun, later mirrored by shots of the sunset) is a fairly close up shot of just the band's two singers, and remains fixed on them even during a largely instrumental portion of the song. Renate Knaup looks bored (but sexy), while Shrat does his best to freak out on a tamborine which you can't hear. Then there's the portions of the film that show scenes of an artifically blue-toned German countryside as the camera drives past, that's fairly mesmerizing. The overall effect is enhanced by the scratches and spots on the time-worn film -- freeze-frame the opening sunrise sequence with your DVD pause button and you'll find many wonderful abstract compositions. Anyway, it's a historical musical document as well as an intriguing art flick -- when it screened at the 1969 Edinburgh Film Festival, American director Samuel Fuller (Shock Corridor) was quoted as saying "It's rough, it's vicious, it's drama". And here's what that festival's program guide had to say, to put you in the mood: "This film will be shown without titles or credits. It is in colour and you will see the German rock group Amon Duul II -- which, apart from Amon Duul I, is the only true progressive and outstanding group from Germany -- on stage with their celebrated light show...Their sound is very heavy, weird, and wild. Imagine a cross between Hapshash, Spooky Tooth, Dr. John and Jethro Tull."
As a sort of bonus, this dvd also features a slide-show style discography featuring album artwork and snippets of songs from each of their umpteen releases. There's nothing else in the way of special features except for the surround sound in place of original mono option.
Originally released back in 1971, "Tanz Der Lemminge" was the third album from the second incarnation of Amon Duul. Where the first incarnations of Amon Duul (along with Amon Duul I, there was supposedly an Amon Duul 0 from the mid-'60s) had much more of a
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Soon after Munich's hippie commune krautrockers Amon Duul formed in the late '60s, some of the more musically inclined formed Amon Duul II whose early releases include the masterpieces Yeti (1970), Tanz der Lemminge (1971), etc. Wolf City is just their fifth album, recorded in 1972, and it's fucking fantastic and I can't believe I never heard it before. It's a little bit less experimental than earlier projects, a little more song oriented, but that may be a good thing if prog-flavored German psychedelia is a new cuppa tea for ya. (My co-worker Byram, in fact, found Wolf City a little too Yes-y for his taste -- so listen to the soundclips before buying.) There are seven tracks here, and each one shifts mood slightly -- from the epic masterpiece opener to a single gentle instrumental to spacerock jams, all the arrangements totally unpredictable and interesting. There's heavy prog-style guitar, pleasantly jangly (what sounds like 12-string?) guitar, screeching violin, deep declamatory bass, sweetly macabre piano and organ, plus all manner of weird chuckles, grunts and choir-like ahhhhs. So good! Wolf City is as epic, hummably memorable, kickass, and heavy as Pink Floyd & Genesis, more chaotic and messy than Can, more accessible and full-sounding than Cluster. If you've never heard Amon Duul II before, this is a fine place to start, as are any of the abovementioned albums. Strongly recommended! Windy's new favorite album. In a tie with Goblin's equally prog-gy Il Viaggio del Bagarazzo Mark for hands down Best Reissue in my 2002 year end tops list.
The absolute hardest albums to write about are those we hold in the highest esteem and though we have an aversion to the general notion of a "desert island selection", this Amon Duul II disc is one of those albums that we could see as an definite inclusion on
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There are so many offshoots of the prog/psych realm that cross into other genres, whose listeners would probably really enjoy, but don't ever get the chance due to the inherent flaws of niche marketing. Luigi Archetti's "Cubic Yellow" is one of those... Known for his collaborations with Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru) in Tiere Der Nacht, Swiss avant-guitarist Archetti now presents this exceptional downtempo electronica album with Hoovering swells that sound like Dom & Roland played at 33 1/3 rpm instead of 45 along with skittering breakbeats not unlike a stripped down Amon Tobin. Fans of Biosphere or The Orb should definitely take note of this one!!!
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Two albums on one disc, this reissue features the talents of krautrock legends Manuel Gottsching, Klaus Schulze, Rosi Mueller, Dieter Dierks and others. Cosmic stuff, the title of the first (twenty-minute) track says it all: "Freak 'n' Roll".
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Following last week's Join In/Starring Rosi, another Ash Ra Tempel 2-on-1 reissue, more cosmic krautrock exploring light and darkness, space and time (with the help of acid guru Timothy Leary on Seven Up).
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While this is not new, we felt since we just listed Manuel Gottsching's essential early eighties proto-acid release E2-E4, we should revisit another essential release from the post-Ash Ra Tempel period that we never listed before. 1976's New Age of Earth was the inaugural release from Ashra, the next phase of Ash Ra Tempel which basically was Manuel Gottsching re-focusing his musical efforts from a group ambition to a solo experience, marked by more streamlined compositions involving more synthesizers and sequencers but not losing his signature cosmic guitar leads altogether. Letting go of the acid psych commune jams of Ash Ra Tempel's previous efforts, New Age of Earth enjoys a more meditative kosmiche sensibility with extended warm electronic sojourns with minimalist compositional tendencies. The opener "Sunrain" is a deliriously percolating track that sounds as if Steve Reich created a proto-Balearic slow disco jam for sunrise dancefloors in Ibiza. "Ocean of Tenderness" is a softly lilting and shifting piece marked by gentle waves of sound and floating guitar figures, while "Deep Distance" is a more contemplative and cinematic rumination on landscapes of sound. Which leads to the final piece "Nightdust", which at 21 minutes is the longest track, a gorgeously majestic build-up of cosmic sensations. Whirring pulsar synth effects over a serene new age foundation like the feel of illuminating stars over some alien planetary ocean, culminating in a searing sky-high guitar lead that propels us into the nebulous ether of oceanic space. In fact the whole album has this epic 'sci-fi beach' feel, reminiscent of that mysterious final scene from The Quiet Earth, where the last man on earth is on the beach and sees the giant planet Saturn looming in the distance. A classic cosmic krautrock release from Virgin Record's most exciting and exploratory period, New Age of Earth is essential for all fans of kraut-y space-rock and psychedelic cosmic bliss.
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RECORD STORE DAY 2016 ITEM!
So this might have been the most sought after Record Store Day release, at least for aQ-ers, how could it not be?? A sprawling double lp psychedelic blowout collaboration between psychedelic explorers Bardo Pond, legendary krautrockers Guru Guru, and Japanese psychlords Acid Mothers Temple!! Not really sure why or how we even have any of these left, but we have VERY few, just a little handful, maybe only half a dozen, and these are definitely out of print, so once our copies are gone, that is IT. So we won't go into too much detail, other than to say, it's pretty much exactly what you might want / expect / hope for, loooooong songs, all spidery guitars, loping, minimal, motorik drumming, strange vocals drifting in and out of the mix, chanting, crooning and (d)evolving into alien glossolalia, fluttery flutes, swirls of smeary FX, and of course, some serious bursts of heavy psych amp damage and unhinged cosmic shred. Total space-kraut-psych nirvana, and pretty essential for anyone into wild trippy heaviness and mesmeric tranced out hypno-psychedelia.
Gorgeously packaged, an appropriately psychedelic sleeve, and each record is two tone colored vinyl, and does include a download code. Once again, these are almost sold out, and we can NOT get more, so grab one if you can, before they disappear, and sorry if you miss out.
Baumann & Koek, who they? Well, what if those two names were Schulze & Schnitzler, Rother & Dinger, or Moebius & Roedelius, would you be excited then? If so, check this out: Wolfgang Baumann & Ata Koek were a Bavarian kosmiche electronic duo, into Krafterk and Tangerine Dream, whose obscure 1979 album has just been rediscovered and reissued by krautrock experts Bureau B.
Total 'Berlin School' swoosh and twinkle, with melancholic sweeps of synth, diaphanous drones, and helpings of propulsive rhythmic pitter-patter here and there, on tracks like "Gamabol" (which begins with mysterious voices swathed in radio static and Morse code bleeps, before building into spacey hypnotic whoosh, cyclic and repetitive). Some Eastern touches are present too, perhaps 'cause Koek was born in Istanbul.
Yup, another unknown, long lost kraut gem a la the recently reviewed Clara Mondshine and Rudiger Lorenz discs - y'know, there are many bands today trying to sound like this sort of stuff, but you wonder if they should even bother when records like this are still out there to find?
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"Black Earth" is the dark as night new album from an old AQ fave. Is it the heaviest album on this list? It is if you understand Bohren's concept of "quiet heaviness", using their self-described "horror jazz" instrumentation of subtly-brushed drums, down-tuned double bass, sparse piano, Fender Rhodes, mellotron, and melancholic saxophone to create an atmosphere of heaviness "which is otherwise only achieved using distorted guitars and lots of noise."
Our appetite was whetted for his release by an email from Bjoern Eichstaedt (of Caacrinolas), our German friend who originally introduced us to Bohren. He described a recent Bohren concert in which the band played in a cubic room, the walls painted completely black, on a black stage, without light -- all wearing black suits. Live, they used two basses for maximum bottom end. He spoke to them afterwards and learned that black metal is their main influence, noticing also that they were all wearing t-shirts from such bands as Immortal. Yet Bohren's music is far from loud and fast. Metallic or not, it's certainly DOOM. Creeping, plodding, yet gorgeously, sleepily melodic. Each note played on the piano, each hit of the snare, carries great weight, and beauty. Their music falls like thick drops of liquid into a still, dark, black pool, rippling the surface with unknown echoes. Foreboding, and entrancing. Certainly more than deserving of this disc's black on black, skull embossed packaging.
The sultry, smoky saxophone introduced on their previous album "Sunset Mission" is still in evidence, though not so much as before. When it's present, it only adds to the noir-ish vibe, great for wandering the rainy streets of night-time San Francisco with this playing in your Walkman, let me tell you. And compared to "Sunset Mission", this new album definitely extends Bohren's methods to further extremes: slower, moodier, dronier, lovelier: "heavier". Quite quietly heavy, indeed.
Not metal -- not remotely. So why did they get written up in Terrorizer magazine? Well this German four-piece isn't exactly a jazz band either, even though they utilize such instruments as Fender Rhodes electric piano, vibraphone, double bass, and saxophone. No, they're actually really really heavy though it's always hard to explain how something this quiet and this pretty can be "heavy". But you'll feel it when you hear it. Their special brand of Teutonic, minimalist, noir-jazz influenced "heaviness" is not to be denied. And so it makes sense that they like grim black metal and that people who like grim black metal like them. A very special band, certainly unknowable to some, but very well liked 'round here. So we were pretty excited to hear that the release of this new album Geisterfaust ("Ghostfist") was impending. And it does not disappoint. Five tracks for the five fingers of the Ghostfist (skeletally represented in the cd digipak). Almost one full hour.
Thusly, a Bohren album cannot be properly absorbed in little snippets. The time frame within which their compositions work is not conducive to quick scans or distracting environments -- even the shortest of the five tracks here isn't much less than eight minutes in length, and the opening track "Zeigefinger" is a 20+ minute experience. So, when I got my copy of this (oooh) I took it home and drew the curtains, lit the candles (well, ok I didn't really light any candles, but could have), and assumed a relaxed pose in order to let the music of Geisterfaust infiltrate my conciousness. Which it did. At Bohren's usual glacial pace, which utterly starts to alter one's perception of time. The long songs are endless...then over. Eternity telescoped. So spare and melodious. Like magnified drops of rainwater, falling on the petals of a shivering flower. The vast space of Bohren's music makes the listener concentrate, and gives each and every note (a vibraphone chime, perhaps, surrounded by a nimbus of a gentle cymbal-strike's shimmer) extra weight and meaning. The Bohren aesthetic certainly holds that less is more. Even though there's guests -- a tuba player and a choir, even -- augmenting the basic Bohren quartet on several of these tracks, you're never overwhelmed with sound, but with silence. And the sheer *subsonics* that a band with two bassists can generate. Geisterfaust flows exquisitely, the listener's pulse rate slowing. Calm. Cool. Bliss. Stupor. So gorgeous, soo heavy. There we go again. This IS heavy. You'll see.
Basically it's like some utterly slow crushing doom band (the Melvins at their most monolithic -- Khanate -- Caspar Brotzmann Massaker -- Corrupted -- Gore) with their instrumentation transposed into the "jazz" realm. The snare only brushed. The distorted electric guitar replaced with the tinkle of a Rhodes piano. Notes not riffs. Played like a dirge, with hints of drone, sombre and sad, but beautiful. There's only a smidgen of saxophone (dreaded by some) that is brought in only at the very end of the last very track, one that is almost speedy by Bohren standards, to act as the light at end of the tunnel, the sun's rays just over the horizon...
Our friend Bjoern in Germany (of Caacrinolas), who first turned Allan and thus AQ on to Bohren five or six years ago, emailed excitedly about the release this new album (that's often when we hear from Bjoern, actually!). Here's a quote from his email: "...fucking amazing!!! Better probably than anything they have done before! You need this for AQ!!! It will sell zillions of copies!" Well of course. As a follow up to the Ipecac-released Black Earth, this is an even greater triumph. Brilliant.
This is nice. For all you Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore fans (or at least 19 of you, as that's how many of these we were able to get), we've got a deluxe vinyl pressing, the first time ever on LP for this, the debut album from the AQ fave German instrumental dirge-jazz group. The import price is helped out by the fact that this comes in a black box with "BOHREN" stamped in silver on the lid, and within the box you not only will find two slabs of vinyl weighted down with their magnificent music, but also tucked in with those there's sundry printed ephemera of apparent Bohren-related interest (b&w art and text, mainly in German). The Gore Motel album was first released on cd back in 1994. When we discovered Borhen a few years after that and got their discs for the store, we wrote the following about this album: "...dark, stark, slow-moving, and lovely. For those who crave comparisons, this is like a super-dirgey version of Scenic. Music for a dark-night campfire out on the plains of Mordor. Slow and beautiful, relying heavily on the ultra-heavy subsonics of the bass and the eerie wavering tones of the organ...Very atmospheric and evocative, indeed chilling."
Of course, this is a very limited, numbered pressing (300 copies!) and, to repeat, we only received a handful. First come, first served on this one.
Here's an old favorite -- a former AQ Record Of The Week in fact -- that we've been unable to get for a long time now, until just this week that is. So we thought we'd better relist it, especially since when we relisted the Ipecac reissue of Bohren's most recent album Black Earth we sold a whole bunch of copies to folks who'd missed it the first time, and this one is perhaps even more essential not to miss! So here's a portion of our review from the first time we had this:
At last, we've managed to import some copies of this fantastic 1995 album by this mysterious German instrumental band! I (Allan) discovered them via a friend in Germany (an AQ-customer who, like many others, has been so kind as to turn *us* on to stuff: it's a two-way street). I was visiting for the 1999 total solar eclipse (well, among other things; I was also in the land of schnitzel for a metal festival...) and heard a tape of this sprawling double cd set in the context of a late night, post-eclipse, wine-drinking get-together. But when I finally got a hold of the actual album some weeks later (we couldn't even find one in the local record stores, my friend had to special order it and send a copy to me in the States), I was happy to discover that it wasn't merely my memories of the wondrous eclipse that had imbued Midnight Radio with such a gorgeous sense of darkness and dread, but that it really was an amazing album!
After Midnight Radio, Bohren released Sunset Mission (later followed by Black Earth). If the now out of print Sunset Mission album was the ultimate noir-jazz soundtrack to a hypothetical first person shooter video game set in afterdark Berlin, then this aptly-titled previous double cd set, (sans saxophone, an addition to the Sunset lineup) is the perfect accompaniment to a late night autobahn death ride, cruise control on, cigarettes burning. There's even a moment, two hours or so into it, when sun starts to come up over the horizon (you'll hear what we mean when you get to the end of the second disc).
Now, we're always talking about "hypnotic" music here at AQ, but this is music for when you're *already* hypnotized, slumped near bed at home or cruising down that infinite highway at 3am, aware of only your own thoughts and the darkness all around made even more black by your headlights. (Maybe this is what some of those unexplicable people who I saw driving around during the eclipse were listening to...for two very long minutes anyway.) Heavy, heavy bass notes, glacially deployed, crushingly beautiful slow-motion guitar and dark, liquid pools of piano, with a narcotized drummer who must be passing in and out of consciousness to occasionally brush his snare and hi-hat. Midnight Radio enters into the tiny pantheon of somehow similarly intended doomy double cd sets beloved of AQ (Esoteric's Pernicious Enigma and Epistomological Despondency, Corrupted's Llenandose de Gusanos). Of course, Bohren is not at all metallic like those two outfits, but is knowing of the same gloombliss. Slow and low, and highly recommended!
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After being out of print for almost FIVE years, Bohren's third album Sunset Mission finally gets re-released this time in a spiffy digipak!
Back when we first listed this (the first Bohren we'd managed to get a hold of for the store), this is what we said: Allan discovered Bohren on a trip to Germany in 1999, with their '95 double-cd Midnight Radio, an amazing extended late-night autobahn driving soundscape, slow, low, instrumental "lounge" music, utterly perfect for a mesmerizing midnight listen. Sunset Mission, their third album, was originally released in 2000 and is similar to Midnight Radio, more overtly "jazzy" perhaps, with the addition of smokey tenor saxophone to their piano/drums/bass lineup. Their original US distributor (electronica/techno label Studio K-7) labeled this ambient, but that's far from the mark. From the song titles ("Prowler", "On Demon Wings", "Black City Skyline", "Darkstalker") to the packaging (photos of nighttime Berlin and dangerous weaponry) to the music (a downtempo film noir soundtrack like the slowest, dirgiest Melvins played by Morphine, darker than Photek, moody and gorgeous) this is the nightmare "ambience" of a nowhere jazz-lounge you'll never leave alive.
By now, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore are a firm AQ favorite, with their recent album Geisterfaust sure to show up in a lot our our customers' year 2005 top-ten lists. Meanwhile Bohren's Black Earth, Gore Motel and Midnight Radio have always been steady sellers, so it's nice to have Sunset Mission back in the racks as well! Of the Bohren discography, Sunset Mission seems to be the jazziest (if indeed it's appropriate to use that term), definitely with the most sax of any of 'em, perhaps coming closest to its follow-up Black Earth in sound.
Maybe we've been going through a bit of a techno phase here at aQ lately, freaking out about the likes of Shed and Silent Servant, among others. For some of us here, it's waaaay more than a phase... And you know we love the krautrock. So Christian Borngraber & Jens Struver are just what the doctor ordered. The Berlin based duo (whom we first encountered remixing the late great Conrad Schnitzler) offer up what could arguably be considered "techno krautrock" on this disc, which collects together two of their vinyl 12" releases (still available separately, we got 'em), Urlaub and In G, originally from 2011 and 2010, respectively.
The three tracks of Urlaub are all quite compelling, rhythmically and otherwise, full of hushed pulsations and eerie echoing electronic hypnosis. There's the tremulous atmospheres of 16 and half minute opener "Reise". The icy dancefloor noir of "Berlin Tribal Music". And then the nearly 12 minute "Dancing Queen", which has a breathy, flute-like lick looping throughout as part of its happy chugging shuffle that we can't help but associate with early, traffic cone era Kraftwerk (gone disco). All of Urlaub is groovy, minimalist, motorik stuff we're really digging.
Maybe even better, and even more krautrockish, is the second half of this disc, In G parts I and II, totaling almost 32 minutes, a slow-building beatscape with whispery, wind-like textures and choppy samples of sweetly sawing strings. It's both haunting and groovy, quite a krauty techno tour de force that incorporates clicks n' cuts, drones, and pop ambient 20th century classical sounds. Wow. We note that it bears a dedication to revolutionary free jazz bassist Sirone.
In particular, if you liked a couple of other releases we've reviewed recently - Oren Ambarchi's Sagittarian Domain, and/or Elektro Guzzi's Live P.A. - this might be right up your alley. Recommended, of course!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Good grief, we've never listed this??? Every once in a while we realize when such an oversight has occurred. Thankfully, we've got this new vinyl reissue to review. This album, originally released in 1971 (that's right!), the debut from Swiss krautrockers (I think you can call 'em that) Brainticket, is simpy one of the freakiest, LSD-trip inspired slabs of groovy mu-sick ever. Up there with Funkadelic's Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow, even.
The first two tracks on side one, "Black Sand" and "Places Of Light", ease you into it, being laidback groovers laced with stabs of distortion... then the true "trip" begins, the utterly over the top, three-part "Brainticket", that starts on side one and spreads over all of side two, dense and propulsive and repetitive, with orgasmic female vocals and all kinds of intense psychedelic throb. It's the perfect soundtrack to goin' completely mad. In addition to wah-wah guitar, organ, flute, tabla, and sci-fi electronics, there's layers of musique concrete "samples", tapes of rainfall, clanging bells, clattering trains, cheering crowds, all sorts of chaotic noise panic...
Quite a overdose of LSD-enthusiasm, that even today still seems more likely to scare folks off from trying drugs than encourage 'em to do so. But then, who needs to actually drop acid when you can just listen to this? Fans of the likes of A.R. & Machines, Amon Duul II, Siloah, Tangerine Dream's Electronic Meditation, and other cosmic trips (as well as hippie kitsch) this is another one you need to get turned on to if you haven't already. Oh, and as a footnote, the drummer went on to play in proto-metallers Toad.
An old fave, maybe a bit more expensive than it needs to be, though to be fair this package does come with a cd version of the album as well, which is a nice touch. 180 gram vinyl, gatefold sleeve, which is nice too.
In the age of the internet, it's rare for any record or band to exist without a comprehensive backstory, or a million blogs with everything you could possibly want to know abut said group or record, but this, the sole album from the awesomely named Bram Stoker, a record with an equally awesome title, Heavy Rock Spectacular, seems to be quite a mystery, released in 1972 on a tiny label, and mostly the work of a chap named T. Brondson, there seems to be very little else known about this guy/these guys and this record. Even though it's been reissued multiple times over the years (once with a whole new cover, and new title: Schizo-Poltergeist!), but really it hardly matters, cuz what does matter is this is a primo slice of heavy hard rocking psychedelic organ driven prog that KILLS. Think Emerson Lake & Palmer, Atomic Rooster, Black Widow, Buffalo, Lucifer's Friend, if that reads like your psych/prog dreamteam, then you'll probably gonna dig Bram Stoker.
The ELP comparison might be the most apt, cuz the organ really is the main instrument, unleashing wild flurries of tangled melodies, locked tight with the drums, the tracks intricate and dizzyingly complex, and with plenty of classical influence, which of course harkens back to ELP tracks like "Toccata", but unlike the guitarless ELP, there's plenty of fuzz guitar going on, some of it extremely blown out and distorted, check out "Born To Be Free", that has to be some of the filthiest, crumbliest guitar EVER, total heavy psych proto metal radness for sure. Those moments of proto metallic heavy psych fuzz guitar though are most definitely outnumbered by all the fierce and furious psychedelic organ jams, but they do make for a pretty sweet combo, especially when the guitar and the organ get all tangled up into wild dueling psych-prog blowouts. Stick around for creepy closer "Poltergeist", which obviously inspired the alternate title, with dense drumming, thick guitar crunch, swirling organ, lush vocal harmonies, some weirdly haunting, hushed passages, and a wild frenzied organ/guitar finale! So good!
German band Camera definitely belong on the Bureau B label, who have brought us quite a few killer krautrock reissues over the years (including the recent Record Of The Week by Gunter Schickert). But - this isn't a reissue! Camera are a current krautrock outfit, apparently with predilection for performing impromptu shows in public locations, and this is their debut. A 3-piece based in Berlin, Camera are modern-day upholders of the krautrock aesthetic, heavily influenced by both Neu! and Harmonia especially. And in fact, they've earned the blessing of their heroes, having played live in collaboration with Michael Rother (Neu!, Harmonia, etc.) and Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia, etc.).
This debut recording features eight tracks of live-in-the-studio, semi-improvised, mostly instrumental jams that indeed "radiate" the classic krautrock vibe. The juggernaut of a first track, "E-Go", leaps out of the gate with an intense pulsating "motorik" beat and heavy waves of distortion, churning forth like something by aQ-faves Circle or Salvatore at their most krautrocky. Shifting moods, that's followed by "Villon", much softer and prettier, like one of Can's quieter moments. Then, on "Ausland", Camera whips up another energetic motorik groove. The next track, "Lynch", is the disc's longest, and finds Camera delving into some spaced-out, kosmiche synth serenity, laced with skittering beats and sinister, wind-swept electronics. But then, after eleven minutes, Camera are back to the amped-up throb with "Utopia Is", another juggernaut (after a bit of a slow-build, that is)...
And so it goes, the rest of the disc following suit, providing more quite authentic tick-tock motorik beats and shwooshing guitar/synth soundscapes like it's 1974 all over again. Krautrock fans will for sure hear echoes of a lot of the greats: Neu!, Can, Cluster, Tangerine Dream, Harmonia, Agitation Free, La Dusseldorf, etc. And anyone into other kraut-loving bands of today, like Circle, Cave, Wooden Shjips, and Hills among 'em, should check this out forthwith. Truly, for any fan of hypno-rock bliss new or old, it's hard to find fault with Camera's worshipful, enthusiastic emulation of their krautrock forebears; if anything, there's something almost a little too perfect about this, in that a krautrock band from back in the day would probably have colored outside the lines a bit more, whereas Camera kinda plays it safer, sticking close to the motorik formula. But, they do it REALLY well and we're definitely digging it!
By the way, there is a vinyl version of this (which comes with a cd too) but our supplier was out this week; we should have more of that in again before our next list, though.
We're always talking about "modern day krautrock" bands - Circle, Hills, The Oscillation, Cloudland Canyon, 3 Leafs, Mugstar, Von Himmel, the list goes on and on - but Berlin's mostly-instrumental Camera, a band known for impromptu shows in public spaces, has a better claim than most to the "modern day krautrock" tag, 'cause of course they are actually from Germany! Not only that, but they've previously played/collaborated with members of Neu! and Harmonia, among others. Funnily enough, though, the press material for this highly anticipated 2nd album of theirs tries to claim that "Camera are not seeking to emulate the sound of older Krautrock bands" - that any sonic similarities to those bands from the '70s are merely coincidental, the result of a shared methodology of music making, we're to suppose. And then it says "You can still call it Krautrock, if you must." Guess what? We must! It is, and really good, too.
Remember I Was Carbon Dioxide (strange title, that) naturally kicks off with a motorik beat, opener "From The Outside" gradually adding shimmering tendrils of synthesizer to what the drummer is laying down, building up to something both lovely and well-muscled. The next track, "Parhelion", takes a similar, uber-hypnotic approach, much more moody though, spaced out and plodding - "slo-mo-motorik" we'd call it. The hissing synth swoosh and echo-effected guitar with which this is layered makes for a thing of beauty, the use of distortion reminding us of some early Salvatore stuff, to cite another "modern day krautrock" fave of ours. That track could lumber forever onwards and we'd be ok with it, but eventually it does come to an end, and the next one, "Synchron", ups the tempo, lightens the mood, more melodic and sunshiney, but the thumping beat is still motorik, and gnarly noises do arise from the shoegazing guitars. Real nice - how they can suggest that Neu! and Harmonia and early Kraftwerk aren't being consciously "emulated" here is crazy! Next, the skree-laden, garage-kraut attack of "Roehre" features guest saxophone doing some free jazz damage to its HEAVY, propulsive stomp.
There's eight more tracks on this album, each in possession of its own special charms. And while many of these tracks mesmerize with their motorik beats (the rhythm just grabs a hold of you and you can't resist it!!), it's not all purely that, and a track like "Ozymandias" works its magic through eerie, droning textures of psychedelic moodiness, shimmering sounds from guitar and keys, the drumming taking a backseat, its skitter just another texture. Most of the tracks bring both rhythm and texture together, in potent aural doses of moody, druggy, majestic krautrock ritual. Fantastic stuff.
Available on cd or vinyl, the latter of which comes with a cd of itself.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
