EDGE OF TIME

The main sequence of Krautrock superstars cast a long shadow across the 1970s, and hidden in the darkness were some overlooked treasures. Like this minor but precious gem from early in the decade: a one-shot project from a band few people (myself included) know much about.

Background info about the group is sketchy, at best. It was formed by two refugee brothers from Hungary after relocating to Düsseldorf; their one and only LP was privately pressed (hence its relative obscurity); and the music on it was supposedly meant to represent an acid trip gone bad (don't they all, in the long run?)

But what a trip it must have been, and continues to be today. The album is structured almost like a soundtrack to the end of innocence, divided into four long segments but really a continuous 36-minute odyssey through inner space, ranging in mood from serene to chaotic and (almost) back again. Along the way is some truly beautiful, often haunting, and sometimes scary music, beginning with the disarming Krautfolk of "Intruitus": a friendly gathering of hippies, complete with bongos, flute, and gently strummed acoustic guitars.

But don't let your guard down too soon: the music gets progressively weirder as it continues. Some of it recalls the near-death nirvana of early KLAUS SCHULZE (imagine a slightly more organic "Cyborg"); elsewhere the album approaches the uneasy bliss of an out-of-body dream state. And an almost NEU!-like motorik undercurrent surfaces on the title track, just before the otherworldly stoned poetry reading, quoted in part on the bare-bones album cover.

Other bands have tried to musically recreate a psychedelic experience, usually ending up with a lot of self-indulgent nonsense. But these guys must have at least taken a road map along for this particular trip. Imagine if the surviving members of THE PINK FLOYD had followed Syd Barrett's sad example and developed a harder drug habit: they might have made this exact same album a year or two earlier. Edge of Time? Edge of Sanity is more like it, and listening to the album is as close as an old but sensitive fuddy-duddy like me ever wants to get to a tab of lysergic acid diethylamide.

Dom never released another LP. Either they said it all right here, or else never recovered from their chemical research and development. But the rarity of this one effort only adds to its uncanny aura, still effective over forty years later.

[ Consumer windfall: the bonus tracks on the CD reissue mesh well with the lysergic melancholy of the original album. The oddball track, and one of my favorites, is the last one: "Let Me Explain", recorded three decades after the "Edge of Time" sessions and sounding like a tongue-in-cheek HOLGER CZUKAY sampling experiment, or maybe a Krautrock outtake from the Eno/Byrne album "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts". ]