Friday, August 18, 2006

Peter Bursch Und Die Bröselmaschine - 1975 - 2
yeah, that's the one! You ain't mistaken, the sought after second album by Bröselmaschine! You won't be disappointed, it's a very good one. Perfect guitar work by Peter Bursch and Willi Kissmer, probably the best German guitar duo ever! Excellent percussion work by Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru), just listen to "House Carpenter" and you'll all know what i mean :-))) . Here's a short review translated by myself from German into English (source: booklet):

After six adventurous and successful years the original and first line-up disbanded in 1974. Some members went to India whilst others moved to the countryside (all members came originally from Duisburg). That was when the founders Peter Bursch and Willi Kissmer reformed Bröselmaschine. Klaus Dapper, a sax player and flutist from the jazz scene, joined as a new member. The musicians already knew each other from diverse sessions and common gigs. It was Conny Plank then who put them under contract and recorded their new record in his studio. Since the band hadn't reached its full line-up at that time, Bröselmaschine's friends viz Mani Neumeier (Guru Guru), Roland Schaeffer (also Guru Guru) as well as Jan Fride (Kraan) helped them by playing at their studio recordings.

line-up:

Peter Bursch (guitar, vocals)
Klaus Dapper (sax, flute)
Willi Kissmer (guitar)
Roland Schaeffer (bass)
Jan Fride (drums)
Mani Neumeier (percussion)

and not to forget: Mahendra Kapadia (tablas, an Indian friend from Düsseldorf)

track listing:

1. Sofa Rock
2. Gc
3. Come Together
4. Country Doodle
5. Na So Was
6. House Carpenter
7. Wayfaring Stranger
8. Ständchen
9. Mississippi Blues

reviewed, translated from German into English and ripped @320 by Timospsychedelicious, 9 tracks, 90 mb, enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy en...! ;-)

your green tunes
pw: sharedfirstbytimo

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Nosferatu - 1970 - Nosferatu
Amongst the most obscure of Krautrock bands, due to being so early and on an unlikely label. In their early days they were fronted by guitarist/vocalist Michael Winzkowski (who went on to Epsilon), but apart from that, nothing is known of their history, except that winds player Christian Felke also guested later with Epsilon. Nosferatu's sole eponymous album was housed in a sinister bizarre cover, that perfectly captured the dark edge of their music, being an atypical Krautrock fusion betwixt Xhol Caravan, Message and Out Of Focus, hinting at British bands like Gravy Train or Jade Warrior. For 1970, they were pioneers, unusual in how Michael Thierfelder's vocals are often sung across the music, which so often tends to surge out into space, fronted by the dual solo instruments of guitar and sax.

Michael 'Mick' Thierfelder (vocals), Christian Felke (sax, flute), Michael 'Mike" Kessler (bass), Reinhard 'Tammy' Grohe (organ), Michael 'Xner' Meixner (guitar), Byally Braumann (drums)

The first time, I heard them, they were auditioning together with several other new groups, all managed by the young and ambitious German promoter Peter Hauke. I was so enthousiastic about NOSFERATU'S splendid musical ideas and their irresisteble drive that I signed them immediately for "Deutsche Vogue" and cut this album a few weeks later.

Don't let me describe their music - all selfpenned -, just listen and enjoy it as much, as Conny (the engineer) and me did, when we recorded this first step into the recording business of the unusually gifted, young German group NOSFERATU!

Thanks to Tony Henrik for this very nice review! There you go, Pat! :-)

@192 kbit/s, 6 tracks, 63 mb, cover included, have fun ;-)
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The Cosmic Jokers - The Sessions
One day in 1974, Manuel Göttsching, guitarist for the legendary Krautrock band Ash Ra Tempel, walked into a Berlin record store and heard some wildly cosmic guitar sounds blasting from the speakers. He was shocked to discover that he was listening to a new Krautrock supergroup, and that he in fact was the guitarist. The Cosmic Jokers - 1974 - Cosmic Jokers were the greatest Krautrock supergroup that never was, a cosmic joke even on most of the musicians who played on the sessions, unbeknownst they were members of this new "group." Over several months in early 1973, producer Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser organized several wild acid parties at Dieter Dierks' sound studio, where the musicians played in exchange for a small fee and all the hallucinogens they could ingest. These musicians included Göttsching and Klaus Schulze of Ash Ra Tempel, Jurgen Dollase and Harald Grosskopf of Wallenstein, and Dierks himself. They had all been part of the Cosmic Couriers, a loose group that had musically backed Kaiser-produced records by Swiss artist/poet Sergius Golowin, gypsy Tarot-reader Walter Wegmuller, and even acid guru Timothy Leary the year before.

From these 1973 sessions, the Cosmic Jokers were born, as Kaiser and Dierks edited and mixed the material and slapped it out on vinyl on Kaiser's Kosmiche Musik label without the other musicians knowing anything about it until the records appeared in stores, even as their pictures were posted prominently on the covers. The self-titled first album followed in rapid succession by Galactic Supermarket (which actually wasn't credited to the Cosmic Jokers when it originally came out) and Planeten Sit-In, all released in 1974. In that same year came out two other records later credited to the Cosmic Jokers, the Kosmische Musik label sampler Sci-Fi Party, and Gilles Zeitschiff (or "Jill's Timeship"). This last album featured Gille Lettmann, Kaiser's girlfriend at the time, also known as Sternenmadchen, narrating over music plundered from various earlier Kosmische Musik releases. By now the unpaid musicians were quite resentful, and Zeitschiff, where they play second fiddle to Kaiser's girlfriend, was the last straw for Klaus Schulze, who soon took legal action against the increasingly megalomaniac Kaiser. By 1975, all the albums were withdrawn until the musicians rights could be sorted out and Kaiser was run out of the country by the authorities, his record empire destroyed. Though some people at the time disparaged these records as a bad gimmick and one of the worst examples of blatant artist rip-off, and Schulze still reviles them, the fact can't be denied that these are some of the best records of utterly tripped-out German cosmic space rock ever made.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Sameti - 1972 - Sameti
Reissue of 1st album by this German group from 1972 (originally on Brain). With connections to Embryo and Amon Duul II, this is pretty cool twin guitar heavy dunt rock, with a 22 minute improv blast at the end that wouldn't be out of place on Dance of the Lemmings.

Sameti was created in Munich in 1971 after Christian "Shrat" Thiele had left Amon Duul II. Their first album consists of one side long improvisation: "Anotherwaytosee", and one side of four semi-structured works. The music itself has similarities with Amon Duul II, but is less imaginative. Their lyrics apparently dealt with their personal habits:

"I'm used to smoke - slipped into my music I'm used to stumble through my stoney days Come over big fat brother joint Come touch my body A long life to that stoned hero"
@224 kb/s, 5 tracks, 69 mb
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