TIMOTHY LEARY & ASH RA TEMPEL: SEVEN UP

The first release from the Cosmic Couriers label - which would disintegrate a mere three years later in the wake of the Cosmic Jokers scandal - sees Ash Ra Tempel team up with Timothy Leary for some trippy freakout rock. To put things in context, in 1972 Leary was on the run from the American authorities, having escaped from a low security prison, so recording an album with him could be seen as a bit of a controversial move from Ash Ra Tempel - and, perhaps, was calculated as a publicity stunt on the part of R.U. Kaiser.

Either way, Leary's presence seems to throw the album off-kilter. There are segments which are very much in line with the typical Ash Ra Tempel sound, during which you wouldn't know Leary was there; at other points, like in the rock and roll section of Space - yes, there's a rock and roll section, it's the segment entitled Right Hand Lover - Leary's personality takes over proceedings, and the album seems to sound like a less jazzy and less progressive version of early Gong. In short, the team-up is an experiment which didn't quite work, and this is one of the least interesting of the early Ash Ra Tempel albums.