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Here we are again, with three more short reviews of not short albums. It's the Krautrock edition this time around.
This is the debut album of a relatively big name in Krautrock - not as universally known as e.g. Neu or Can but actually much better than them, to my taste anyway. The band were successful enough preforming live before recording this to score funding from the Goethe foundation to take a trip to Lebanon, Egypt, Greece and Cyprus, where they alternated between performing and making a whole lot of field recordings of both music and everyday life in these countries. Upon returning to Germany they recorded this album, interspersing their music with said field recordings. Really good balance, IMHO, between guitar-centric and synth-centric music (the latter courtesy of none other than Michael Hoenig, pre-Tangerine Dream and pre his solo work), with enough variety in style to never get boring but also none of the just plain too "weird/experimental at the time, cliched and uninteresting 50 years later" stuff you find in a lot of this kind of music from the 70s (e.g. every track with recorded vocals played back in reverse ever). Completely instrumental from start to finish, like the vast majority of their later work, too. I'm a solid fan, of this album and of the band. Conventional wisdom online seems to hold that their second album (imaginatively named "2nd") is better than this. I'm not sure I agree. Not that 2nd is bad, it's not. It's good. Just not sure it's better. Embrace both!
Alongside the band's official website (surprisingly still regularly updated!) there's a nice fansite which contains a lot of historical details gleaned from an informational CD-ROM accompaniment (!) to a 90's CD re-release of one of their albums, which talks about the other bands of the time which the Agitation Free folks played with and hung out with - which includes both the other two bands whose albums are reviewed below. In fact, this fansite was how I first learned about Kraan! Great resource, with classic period web design to boot.
Agitation Free fansite from 1998
Despite being released under the Ash Ra Tempel name, this is actually founding guitarist Manuel Göttsching's first solo album (which were subsequently released under the "Ashra" name). Göttsching when on to have quite the career, eventually moving from just playing the guitar to mastering synthesisers, too (with which he started off in a relatively typical 70's Berlin School style but later basically invented ambient/minimal techno with the incredible album E2-E4). But his early solo work (this and the later "Blackouts" album) is defined by mind-blowing solo guitar work. This album obviously predates anything like the modern looper pedal, but a very similar effect has been obtained using tape delays and (according to the FAQ at ashra.com) playing while watching a large stop watch! Really spacey stuff. The opening track "Echo Waves" (about 18 minutes long) is more energetic than anything that follows and is, IMHO, the highlight, but the whole thing is good. If you like this, check out "Blackouts", too - each of them fits without much waste on one side of a 90 minute tape, if you're into that kind of thing.
Inventions for Electric Guitar on YouTube
Kraan are a little jazzier, a little more cheerful and a little more poppish than your average Krautrock band - to the extent that you might question whether they belong in the genre or not, which I guess depends on whether or not you think it *is* a clearly defined genre with actual defining musical characteristics or whether it's just a sort of wastepaper basket that people can drop any music from a particular place at a particular time into. Well, whatever, I like 'em, which is increasingly rare for me these days when it comes to bands whose work features singing as a matter of course. Compared to their contemporaries, Kraan distinguish themselves in part by making regular and strong use of the saxophone. Surprisingly, these guys are still around and still performing, and I understand that these days they are squarely in the jazz / fusion arena, which doesn't surprise me at all. I'm only familiar thus far with the material from their first four albums, of which this is the last. Their style seems to have remained more or less the same during this early period. That's not a complaint, I enjoy the style and they do it well, just letting you know that if you dig it too there's more where it came from. I chose this album to in particular mention here instead of any other mostly because lately I've just been really enjoying the title track "Bandits in the Woods", but really, this is more of a "check out Kraan" post than a "check out Let It Out".