AFFENSTUNDE

Impressive debut with a mysterious, religious, weird electronic album about human being, where man becomes man. Florian Fricke experiments the opportunities of the Moog synth to create a whole album around atmospheric, strange electronic effects. The result is unique and the approach was new in popular music. The "Dream" series are enigmatic titles, a manifesto of experimental sounds treated by the "electronic". The first track starts with concrete noises taken from the nature, then comes bizarre long continuous forms augmented by circular "cosmic" sounds. The second track directly follows the previous composition without any transition. Frantic "ethnic" drums dominates the tune, it's purely shamanistic." Dream part 3" delivers abstracted, meditative, scary sounds produced by the Moog synth (very closed to the seminal "zeit" by TD). "Affenstunde" is absolutely magic; a captivating "ethnic" composition which provides an immersive dialogue between possessed acoustic percussions and electronic loops, textured patterns. The second part of the tune reminds me Terry Riley's "Persian surgery dervishes" with its endless hypnotic organ loops. The bonus track ("train through time") on the SPV reissue is a powerful, percussive / repetitive track which progressively meditatizes the listener. The track has similar psycho-acoustic effects than Gottsching's marvellous guitar trance-like work in his "inventions". To sum up things Affenstunde is milestone in progressive electronic music, culminating at the top of the most creative rock albums of the last century.