IMPRESSIONS ON READING ALDOUS HUXLEY

Exceptional psych-electronic rock experimentations by an other obscure 70's band from Germany. This album is said to be inspired by Aldous Huxley's famous, enchanting writings & mystical philosophy. It's clear that the entirety of the album is assured by a vast arsenal of weird incantations and deep hallucinogenic effects. The content is very colourful, luminous, eclectic and perfectly orchestrated. Nothing is linear or boring and the psych grooves work like magic. It's not easy to understand in one listening the complexity of this release. In some aspects it tends to be near to kraut-experimentations but without the sinister vibe, the ambiences provided are rather optimistic and enthusiastic. The prologue is based on dreamy like flute lines and tranced out organic drones. "Alpha Beta Gamma" is an epic, progressive spacey rock composition dominated by soft, pop, floating sounding improvisations. "Lenina" is an enigmatic, fragile, celestial song for the flute, moody bass lines, a beautiful air. "Soma" is a really stoned, kraut, outer space experience, featuring a lot of intergalactic electronic sounds and a massive rocking energy! "The end" is the central piece here, a majestic "cosmic" rock essay with lot of guitars, sax, dreamy flutes and weird effects. Epilogue is a recitation. A mesmeric, highly inspired psychedelic album. A little classic!

Very good album. 5 star most of the way excepting the nearly 18-minute "The End", which contains several memorable parts but is too aimless and seems to be losing the concept of Huxley's Brave New World, as if their actually inspired musical interpretation of the novel were too short and they needed some filler for the second side of the record, at least that is what the track devolves into. Side 1 is great and somehow really evokes for me the character of that novel very well. Essential for krautrock fans, excellent for progressive rock fans of all types. Sounds similar to Dom's 'Edge of Time', early Pink Floyd, Brainticket's 'Celestial Ocean', Can,... Overall a very inspired album with great ideas and execution and having a very unique, varied and inventive but cohesive, sound. Probably in my top 30 krautrock albums.

4.5

I believe this was just recently issued on cd for the first time. An intersting and highly thought of Krautrock album from 1972. I found this a little tough to get into as we get a lot of abstract passages especially early on in the album. Lots of flute and Psychedelic sections. Some vocals but this is mostly instrumental. Drummer Dicky Tarach also played with A R & THE MACHINES. Very cool album cover too.

"Prologue" opens with the organ floating in then flute. "Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon...Ford" is the next track and yes I get it. A light beat as a powerful atmosphere rolls through. The music slows right down then picks up again. Nice bass 6 1/2 minutes in. "Lenina" opens with flute. It's fuller a minute in. People are talking. Back to flute before 3 minutes. "Soma" opens with what sounds like sitar but I don't think that's it, then the guitar comes in with organ and it sounds amazing as drums pound. Sounds like theremin 2 1/2 minutes in then the guitar returns late.

"Malpais Corn Dance" is mostly flute, percussion and vocal melodies. "The End" is the tour de force at over 17 1/2 minutes. Strummed guitar,flute and bass with lots of atmosphere early. It settles 3 1/2 minutes in with what sounds like cello and other sounds. A change 5 1/2 minutes in then the tempo picks up with strange sounds. Flute, drums, bass and strummed guitar 9 1/2 minutes in as it changes again. A dark drone with vocal melodies before 13 minutes, then flute and guitar joins in. Sax before 16 minutes. Incredible tune. "Epilogue" is spoken words and wind chimes with the wind blowing. A cool way to end this strange trip.

This isn't an album i've fallen in love with. It's not overly melodic or accessible, yet all the ingrediants are here. Easily 4 stars.

This unlikeliest of get meetings sees a German / Irish combo. God knows what this recording has got to do with the Aldous Huxley novel. There are no references at all at any point as to what's going on.

An almost entirely instrumental album with a generic early 70's Krautrock feel, this album does little for me and there is a primitive drum machine - which at the end of the day sounds hopelessly dated. However, there's some good flutes on display which brings a bit of life to proceedings. And that over amplified 'Stylophone' certainly gives things a goofy quality. This one just scrapes a three.

This German-Irish combo the only album is often mentioned as one of krautrock greatest release. My knowledge of krautrock isn't so deep to confirm or criticise that, I can only say that this music is just different face of krautrock.

You will hardly find there psychedelic jazz-rock very characteristic for early krautrock. This album music's roots are in somewhere in acid folk, and the other components of this mix are early spacey electronics and neo-classic . Main instrument in the front of all sound are two flutes, folksy or medieval in moments. They are supported by spacey keyboards. All the sound is down tempo, quite psychedelic, a bit lazy, with accent on melodies, not rhythms.

Combination of dreamy flutes and spacey organ gave to the album strong psychedelic feeling, but it obviously lucks dynamics. For me this music is quite interesting and unusual, but too folksy, dreamy, and rhythm less. I really prefer more jazz-rock based krautrock. Not a bad album, but possibly not my cup of tea.

Although RPI has lots of one-album-wonders, there are a few in Krautrock too and this is one of the better ones. The members are mostly German but there are two Irish members as well (my background is German/Irish so maybe that has something to do with me liking this so much). It's mostly instrumental but there are some vocals. On "Epilogue" you have someone reading a part from the book Brave New World(at least I think so, I haven't read the book).

The instruments here are mostly acoustic guitar, bass, drums, drum machine, synth, flute and sax. There is also some electric guitar, cello and recorders. "Soma", which you can listen to on PA, is actually one of the weaker songs here. This even has an epic in the almost 18- minute "The End". It's the most symphonic song here. Both this track and "Alpha Beta Gamma Delta" has some California-style late '60s boogie rock sections. You really aren't expecting these sections when you first listen to this album. A nice contrast to the rest of the music.

Speaking of "Alpha Beta Gamma Delta", this is one of the best Krautrock songs I've ever heard. The beginning sounds way ahead of it's time; it reminds me of Genesis circa Duke with the drum machine and synth. Nice acoustic guitar here. "Lenina" has some spoken female vocals. "Halpais Corn Dance" is mostly bass drum and percussion with recorders and acoustic guitar. It has some "la la la" type vocals.

The sound and production is really good for a Krautrock release from 1972. It's not as lo-fi and 'rough around the edges' sounding as other Krautrock releases from the early 1970s. Sure, that works for some groups but on this album it would take the music done a notch. Not a masterpiece but a great album nonetheless. A solid 4 stars.

Impression on Reading Aldous Huxley seems like the perfect soundtrack for a hippie-era film adaptation of the novel, Brave New World. The music here is expansive, hazy and, most of all, groovy; very groovy, in fact, which makes their music sound more pleasant to the ears at first, compared to their freak-out experimental peers from Germany, like Ash Ra Temple or Amon Düül II. Like other German bands of the era, Brave New World don't seem to mind borrowing from the American-style psychedelia. The music is also highly structured, compared to the jam-based sound of the previously mentioned bands. There's a definitive prog-rock atmosphere in between all the groovy-ness and mind-melting psychedelic effects, The End being the best example. That song is a world of its own, quite varied in atmosphere without sounding jagged or abrupt. Although I rather tend to skip Halpais Corn Dance, when in the right mood I enjoy it as well. Heck! With eyes closed I can see myself as the lil' Bernard Marx watching the Alpais dancing in the dust. (If only I had a bit of Soma to enjoy it all even more for hours on end...) As a whole, the albums flows seamlessly into its, rather humorless (compared to the novel), chilling end. This is, definitively, album worth checking out for fans of mind-expanding-70's-acid-groovy-trippy-far-out-yeah... man.

3.5

Although Germany's early Krautrock scene took on many forms from spoken word polito-rock and heavy guitar based progressive rock to jazz-fusion and a slightly more progressive version of what would become known simply as Deutschrock, the best and most authentic form of the Kraut scene came from the bands that pushed the boundaries of the world of unrestrained psychedelia. Bands like Amon Duul II, Can, Cluster and countless others who focused more on transcendental dreamy atmospheres and mind-bending lysergic tones and timbres offered true escapism into hitherto unthinkable soundscapes that altered the very nature of the music industry itself and in the process crafted musical journeys that were more like a multi-dimensional awakening rather than a mere musical escapade.

While many of the aforementioned bands are widely known, there were also many that existed for very short time, recorded a mere single album and then dissipated into the history books and swept aside from the tide of musical changes that have ensued over the following decades. Coming from Hamburg, the kosmische BRAVE NEW WORLD released its one and only contribution to the greater Kraut scene but what a unique album it was. IMPRESSIONS ON READING ALDOUS HUXLEY was released in 1972 and as the title clearly states inspired by the English writer and philosopher who wrote nearly 50 books and illustrated the commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism with "The Doors Of Perception" most famously having been the inspiration behind the moniker and subject matter of the US band The Doors. This band too took its name from another Huxley novel that appeared in 1932.

BRAVE NEW WORLD was created by Reinhart Firchow (recorders, flutes, ocarina, Stylophone, percussion, vocals), John O'Brien-Docker (guitars, organ, percussion, vocals, wind chimes) and Herb Geller (flutes, cor anglais, saxophones, organ) and along for the ride was Dicky Tarrach (drums, percussion), Lucas Lindholm (bass, bass fiddle, organ, piano) and Esther Daniels (voice). Irishman John O'Brien-Docker had previously played on Die City Preachers and Marcel, and also recorded as Inga & John, the Inga Rumpf of Frumpy fame. IMPRESSIONS ON READING ALDOUS HUXLEY emerged as one of the most eclectic Kraut offerings of the era. Through its seven psych-electronic fueled tracks, the band engaged in a freeform consciousness stream in the vein of Annexus Quam, the cyclical psychedelic grooves of Amon Duul II, jazz-tinged flavors from the Embryo book as well as rock oriented guitar soloing and heavy doses of lysergic organ runs.

Add some ethnic flavors in the vein of Agitation Free, a dash of whimsical vocal incantations from time to time in tandem with occasional pop hooks, dreamy folk inspired flute flavors and no clear linear delivery and it doesn't take long at all to discover you've entered some truly unique territory on this under the radar Kraut gem. Although some classic Krautrock albums can conjure up some strange and freaky emotional responses, IMPRESSIONS ON READING ALDOUS HUXLEY offers one of those pleasant hallucinogenic trips with a colorful palette of perfectly orchestrated transitions from various forms of musical motifs to another that don't dance too deep in the darkness but rather keep things just above the surface to allow the light to shine in. The whole affair evokes a triumphant return to the sacred balance beyond the corrupted control systems of our planetary prison complex.

This is a bizarre little album that is really like going on a 40-minute journey since the album starts off in a happy flute dominated Medieval folk setting and then slowly transmogrifies into one new musical motif after another becoming more comfortable in its idiosyncratic delivery system. Towards the end of the album there are moments that remind you of what the chamber rock bands such as Univers Zero and Present would adopt and create entire careers behind with slow brooding cadences that spiral out in cyclical loops and allow improvisational contrapuntal elements to congregate into bizarre mood altering concoctions. Despite the transcendental disconnect that the album paints in certain plentitude, the return back to jazzy and rock oriented motifs recallibrates the mood setting as do the pastoral flute segments, sometimes both styles having a call and response conversational effect.

Any way you slice it, BRAVE NEW WORLD delivered a beautiful specimen of Krautrock like no other and this stand alone album still sounds utterly unique nearly 50 years after its release. By craftily taking many of the concurrent strategies of the contemporary Krautrock scene and weaving them into one single tapestry of an album's length, IMPRESSIONS ON READING ALDOUS HUXLEY seems like it prognosticated its one-shot nature by cramming an entire career of ideas into a single musical offering. One of those rare examples of a freaky progressive psychedelic experience that takes you through myriad soundscapes but exudes an uplifting vibe. Think of this band as a mix of other Krautsters such as Between, Amon Duul II, Embryo, Agitation Free, Achim Reichel, Annexus Quam and Tomorrow's Gift and you're on the right path. Definitely one of the more adventurous and experimental of Germany's diverse musical movement that was a response to England's psychedelic rock 60s. Responses to Kraut bands obviously vary because the impact is more on an emotional level rather than a technical one but for my tastes BRAVE NEW WORLD delivered the perfect example of the eclectic and psychedelic German stylistic approach.