MALESCH

Here is one of the best trips you can set on just sitting down listening to your stereo. In 1972 the Agitation Free managed to turn their Middle-East experiences into music, thus creating the ultimate "on the road" krautrock album. Listening to the tracks that make up this unique experience, you get the impression to cross the desert or to be lost inside a Suq (the oriental street bazar), to enter the most intimate sides of the Kasba or to camp together with a nomade tribe among the dunes of the Sahara. The album finds its unity and strength in the alternance of free form spacey improvisation and well structured more rhytmical pieces. I really think that the album should be considered as a whole, also noticing how tracks flow into each other making it difficult to tell them apart, but the several titles allow to recognise and point out the outstanding moments in this record, which are many. I really like the step-by-step climax of "You play for us today", as well as the long spacey, ethereal epic of "Sahara City", which really reminds me of Atem-era Tangerine Dream. The band can make a very intelligent use of minimalism throughout the album, especially in "Ala Tul", with its iterative keyboard patterns, and "Pulse", a track lost somewhere between Klaus Schulze and early Kraftwerk (or Seesselberg), but with a lighter and more dynamic attitude. The production is very good: just listen how electronics, live street recordings and ethnic percussions can flow into each other in a natural way, or the mastery in using the echo effect in "Khan el Khalili" also to create rhytmic passages. In the end, the short "Rücksturz" stands out as a sort of "proto-new-wave" anthem allowing Agitation Free's imaginary caravan to end up their trip somewhere in between your soul and faraway lands.