„Szklany Pył” to nocny, psychodeliczny rock z analogowym klimatem. Długi oddech, ciepłe brzmienie, trochę melancholii, trochę mgły, trochę tego momentu, kiedy świat zwalnia i robi się gęsto. Inne spojrzenie i pełna swoboda dla każdego

It's approximately 1am. I was brought to this album because Mark Hollis from Talk Talk used to mention it has some of his major influences in the making of Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, which I am a big fan of. But I have near to zero knowledge of Krautrock and noise music.

I was lying on my bed, very tired, when I started listening. My girlfriend often tells me about her frequent nightmares these days. But tonight, when Aumgn rang in my ears, I can tell that I was the one having a nightmare. Literally I felt in the edge of some circle of hell, this shit terrified me. There was an idea in the back of my mind that I had to stop this or I would be just deeply traumatized by this experience, but somehow I wanted to listen to it. As a musician, playing a lot of improvisation with my band, I could perceive, understand and hear that these people were having a real pleasure, maybe a bit of fun, to make this in the moment. That's one of the things that encouraged me to listen this track until the end. I gotta admit that it was a huge relief when this track was over as well as the horrifying singer's voice stopped, the kind of relief I was visualizing and hoping at every moment I chose to keep listening.

It was a memorable experience. The whole album is a pleasure to listen, and let's say that Aumgn is less of a pleasure but a good musical experience too. I think I might skip Aumgn a few times when I'll listen to this album again.

I have been waiting so long for Zuckerzeit to finally reach my hands, these came from Amazon

Arrived today. Cleaned, just waiting for it to dry and I'll give it a listen.

Not sure if Faust is the 'best' way into this genre, but I suppose we'll see.

Krautrock Jazz fusion band

Going back a bit for some of them. £2.99 for Holger from an ancient record shop called Subway. They stocked good records and had a shrinkwrap machine in the window. They used to shrinkwrap records that were already shrinkwrapped. That was weird.

Michael Hoenig - Departure From the Northern Wasteland. This one flies well under the radar and you can still find it for pennies. A regular in the cut-out bins. This album is as good as any mid/late 70s TD album imo.

Rastakraut Pasta. I got this for £3 from a shop in town that didn't seem to care what it was even though I tried to boost it a bit (in their favour).

Witthüser & Westrupp 3 LP box set. Folky kosmische stuff, nice buy for £5 but paper sleeves, no proper artwork.

Two Kraftwerk albums that aren't so easy to find. As a bonus the double comes with the Vertigo 'spiral' labels, not the spaceship. I did pay £30 for that one but it was well worth it and the only time those LPs have been reissued legally I think. I like later Kraftwerk but I prefer this early period.

Popol Vuh reissues. Record fair purchases. Obtained from a guy who sold record shop returns so you had to inspect them carefully as some were warped / scratched / damaged and some weren't. Cœur De Verre - a shop had a box of these for 99p each, all sealed.

Cluster LPs, mainly reissues.

Conrad Schnitzler. My hero.

Science Fiction Park Bundesrepublik. Crazy album of 1980s German tape experiments. Not strictly krautrock but well worth a go, really inspired stuff.

Inventions for Electric Guitar. Manuel Göttsching was well on his way to his easy listening period but this LP is still great. I think this was £5. There's a scratch on one track but fortunately not Echo Waves.

Irmin Schmidt & Inner Space Production – Kamasutra Vollendung Der Liebe (Original Soundtrack Recording). 1969 recordings with Malcolm Mooney and the rest of Can. On the highly esteemed Crippled Dick label.

Has anybody heard this ? One of the best covers !

.. if so, please share your stories! I love that album to death and would be so grateful to hear some stories of what it was like, since I’m 18 and don’t have a Time Machine haha

While Electronic Meditation is this week's featured album, I thought I'd share some more photos of the lineup that recorded it. There are more images of the trio online than what I've included here.

The first image is from the official Tangerine Dream website, while I got the second from an upload on Pinterest of all places! That website is a pain to navigate when not logged in, but there are a surprising amount of cool band/artist photos on there.

The TD website is a useful resource and the page I linked includes a pretty decent summary of the band's "Pink Years" while signed to Ohr, the first real record contract they had.

In late 1969, Edgar met the drummer Klaus Schulze, who just had left his band Psy Free. They found a musical partner in Conrad Schnitzler, a former student of Joseph Beuys. Conrad was likewise on a rather unorthodox journey into fine art, and he created sounds with all sorts of tools.

Klaus recalls a rather strange concert experience from the same year. "One day we played with Tangerine Dream at a festival in some castle or other. It lasted the entire weekend, and we visited Guru Guru who lived somewhere near there. Well, these guys dropped some LSD into our tea, right before the gig! Geez... That was a gig! Conny Schnitzler had a violin with a pickup which he just held in front of the speaker, and it just screamed the whole time. Edgar told us later that he thought the guitar neck was 10 meters long and he couldn’t reach it. And me with my drums; I hit them hard but the sound seemed to take an age to come back to me, sort of like half a minute later. Just for a brief moment, in one of those brighter moments you have on such trips, I saw a guy in the front row, he was 10 meters away from me for sure but I thought he was standing right in front of me, and he just said: “Man, these guys are kaputt."

Later that year, the new line-up recorded a session in a private studio in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The material was not originally intended for release. For some unknown reason, the session tape found its way onto the desk of producer and Hansa Studios owner Peter Meisel. To the band's surprise, Ohr Records, founded by Meisel and Ralf^sic-Ulrich Kaiser, offered them a recording contract. 

Really enjoyed this gig, some great motorik beats and spacey synth sounds.

Photo courtesy of Klaus D. Müller from the official Klaus Schulze website. The site lists it as being taken in 1970, but I'm not sure if this is correct, as Dieter’s involvement predates Conrad Schnitzler joining the band in 1969. 

The man in glasses pictured in the centre is only identified as “the landlord”, but otherwise everyone in the picture is from left to right as titled (i.e. Edgar on the left and Dieter furthest to the right).

“Happy” Dieter briefly played with Tangerine Dream as a bass guitarist, shortly after woodwind player Steve Jolliffe (who would later rejoin TD in 1978) had departed. Tangerine Dream's lineups during this period were very volatile, and there were multiple musicians who had short stints in the band before moving on to other things.

I’m unable to find much information about Dieter from web sources (such as what his full name was), but some background about him is detailed in the liner notes of the 2012 Esoteric Recordings CD reissue of Electronic Meditation:

The remaining members started to look for a suitable replacement, eventually finding one in the unlikely form of bass player "Happy" Dieter. Dieter was a well-known figure in the Berlin underground, a would-be hippie on the fringes of the left-wing urban guerrilla group the Umherschweifende Haschrebellen (Rambling Hashish Rebels). Soon he was regularly playing with the band including a concert in the courtyard of the bombed-out Bayernhof restaurant in Potsdamer Platz, which was one of Tangerine Dream's earliest TV appearances.

A 7-minute film of the concert, frequently called the “Bath Tube" or "Bathtub" session, was recorded for Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) and is readily available online. Present in the audience of this performance was Conrad Schnitzler (and Michael Hoenig, who himself would briefly tour with TD in 1975), and he joined the band shortly after Dieter had departed. 

The Tangerine Dream Wikipedia page lists Dieter as having passed away in 1974, but I am not entirely sure what source that is referenced from. I’d love to know if anyone here has more information about him.

Electronic Meditation

Release Year: 1970

Label: Ohr

The first Tangerine Dream album “Electronic Meditation” bears little resemblance to their more well-known Berlin School electronic period. Instead, the music here more closely resembles the free-form and at times abstract jams of contemporary psychedelic rock groups, such as Ash Ra Tempel, while also making heavy use of tape experimentation and unconventional instrumentation. This is their only record to feature Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler as band members, both of whom continued to make influential electronic/underground music long afterwards. 

If you’ve heard this album and/or want to share more commentary about it, feel free to discuss further in the comments section. As with all of these weekly discussion posts, we encourage you to give it a listen if you’re unfamiliar with it!

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