TONE FLOAT

Organisation was hardly a fitting name for such a ramshackle outfit. And if the band hadn't been an incubator for the man-machines of KRAFTWERK it's doubtful many people would even remember them now.

Their only studio album was actually one of the earliest expressions of the German counterculture on record, but it never enjoyed the same influence or significance as other embryonic Krautrock: compare it to the more passionate racket of early CAN or AMON DÜÜL, for example. A lot of circumstances conspired to undermine the effort, including the decision to release it through the British RCA label, which didn't exactly raise the band's local profile at home. The English-language name and track titles effectively camouflaged the band's German identity as well, reducing the album's novelty value just when the market for Krautrock was shifting to interstellar overdrive.

Because of the later Kraftwerk connection it's a fascinating album in retrospect, but hardly successful even on its own naïve yet charming hippie-trippy terms. Opening Side One of the original LP with a too-loosely structured twenty-plus minute jam, that itself begins with almost ten rhythm-deprived minutes of haphazard percussion, was probably a miscalculation, serving only to underline an absence of any true musical direction.

Organisation lacked the sterling underground credentials of their better-known contemporaries, and the impression left by "Tone Float" is of a young band riding the coattails of other, more dedicated Krautrock troublemakers. Ralf and Florian were smart enough to ditch the bongo drums soon afterward, on their way toward becoming household names (in smarter cosmopolitan neighborhoods). But their ex-bandmates Basil, Butch and Fred would sadly become minor footnotes in Krautrock history, as would the album itself: a collector's treasure for Kraftwerk completists but otherwise lacking enough sparks to even qualify as a flash in the pan.