Blissful live improvised kosmische music in vein of krautrock bands Ash Ra Tempel and The Cosmic Jokers.
Sylvester Anfang II – Sylvester Anfang II (2009)
“Continuous jamming, during which the band zoned out and unfurled some gorgeous sprawling psychedelic krautrock flecked jams, jams that seemed to gradually evolve into hazy drugged out ragas, all woozy bass lines, simple motorik drumming, wheezing organs, spidery guitars, and soft hazy clouds of effects, everything blurred and smeared into gauzy expanses of minimal ritualistic drift. But the magic of SAII is that for all of their abstract drug rock exploration, they’re also masters of freaked out psychedelic space rock blissout.”
Kollektiv – Live 1973 (2005)
“Our music has a structure which is simpler than it’s used to be in jazz, instead we pay more attention to tones and moods. It’s predominantly improvised music what we’re doing. Even most of the themes and determined parts are originally based on improvisation. We broaden the common range of tone colours by using sometimes a rather strong electronic alienation of guitar, flute or saxophone. According to our experience our music is well appreciated by both jazz and rock fans since each of them can find sufficient elements of their preferred style respectively.”
Sula Bassana – Dark Days (2012)
“Entire record is instrumental… Guitar is really psychedelic and the extended guitar improvisation is just awesome and reminds me a bit of older Bevis Frond, both catchy and psychedelic… Spaced out… Surrealistic Journey is just over 20 minutes long and begins slowly and features Pablo on the drums. It begins with some really spaced out organ playing and guitar that builds up slowly, a bit like Electric Orange… It starts off with a really freaked out guitar and bass before a riff starts to develop. This sounds a lot like the jams that Electric Moon play these days until the mellotron like sound kicks in and totally changes the mood. I love the way this track flows from the heavy to mellotron parts. Damn cool. Bright Nights is another 10min space out that starts with delay guitar, organ and a simple drum beat but develops into a heavy Electric Moon style psychedelic trip.”
Lumerians – Transmissions From Telos Vol. IV (2012)
“Flip it and things get bongier still with a monolithic bit of echoey cosmic synth frippery slicing out huge great yawning voids in your headspace. It’s fully astral, with only the slightest hints of melody to cling onto as they dive headlong into a psychedelic otherworld, eventually joined by distant drum grooves and wailing guitars which drift in and out disconcertingly over metallic grating drones before the rhythm section really starts getting its groove on. Once they do it’s reminiscent of Can once again, but after a while of that the grooves get overtaken by dark ambient static rumbles, which ease down to hisses and whooshes accompanied by metronomic two-note bass, which gradually gets enveloped by slowly developing Moondog-esque polyrhythms to finish. Impressive drug jams throughout.”
Golden Cup – Vagabond (2012)
“Three tracks of hazy, stoned drifting psychedelia. The opening track takes up the entirety of side one, a slow-burning improvised trance-like piece with Can-style rhythms, wibbly synths and guitars building up to a frenzied finale. Reminicent of all manner of drugged out early ‘70s kraut-jams there’s an oddly Celtic feel to it. Track two is completely different, opening with a heavily echoed bongo-like sound there is fluttering flute and birdsong. Track three is similar with tribal-ish percussion, droney sitars and wandering psych guitars and a drifting, hazy almost underwater vibe. A three track stormer of semi-improvised, tripped out celestial psych-drone to while away these hazy summer evenings.”
Wind – Wind & Friends (2011)
Norwegian band that fuse improvised jazz with improvised psychedelic rock. Think John Coltrane meets Amon Duul in intense LSD jam.
Erna Schmidt – Live 69–71 (2000)
“Erna Schmidt were living near the village of Wintrup in a country house even before it also became the home of Kraan. They were a very popular live band, well-known for their incredibly long improvisations in the Cream and Hendrix vein. Some tracks would last up to three quarters of an hour, for on stage they were usually stoned, jamming away in a frenzy, often together with guest musicians. Some good-quality recordings of these gigs survived and were used for putting together Live ‘69-71.”
People of the North – Deep Tissue (2010)
“Started by Kid Millions and Bobby Matador of Oneida, People of the North is an ongoing but sporadic outgrowth of that restlessly experimental Brooklyn assemblage. While there are no clearly defined boundaries separating POTn from Oneida, it might be fair to say that the music tends to be more staunchly devoted to minimalism, repetition, improvisation, and sternness than the wide-ranging efforts of the big brother band. They packaged and unleashed a noisy krautrock behemoth of a jam session in the form of Deep Tissue. Recorded in 2009, it consists of four plodding, hypnotic psychedelic tracks clocking in at around 37 minutes – making it quite the heart-pounding journey. With an obvious penchant for improvisation and the immediate mood, People of the North not only revels in the static charge found in heavy guitar and feedback drenched freak-out moments, but can also be heard mining more pulsing, minimalist territory here. They’re pulling big influence from krautrock innovators Can and Neu! , but there is also a deeper, darker Japanese psych influence here, new and old – Les Rallizes Denudes & Acid Mothers Temple to name a couple. If you’re a fan of any psych, space rock or krautrock, you need to hear this record.”
Koolaid (Global Tyranny) – Koolaid (Global Tyranny) (2011)
“The weirdest of the bunch, groovy, and almost funky, thick steel string strum, all wreathed in psychedelic guitar noise, laced with some weird samples, drug related of course. All wound into a sound noisy and weirdly tripped out. Totally drugged out hypnotic space rock . The band set up a groove, usually super simple and minimal, spaced out and krautrocky, and then over the top, they basically let loose, a barrage of samples, all twisted up and layered and doused in effects, some looped rhythmically, others slowed down and sped up, and on top of that sheets of strange drones and whirs, clouds of swooping echo and delay, all manner of backwards melodies. The musical part slipping easily from minimal hushed lope, to pounding wah wah guitar drenched Stooges-y psychedelic stomp, to buzzy raga, to dirgey almost Butthole Surfers sounding drug rock, but again, it’s what’s going on all around it, which is like a symphony of malfunctioning samplers gone haywire.”