JOIN INN

The Cosmic Couriers stable of bands - during the brief lifespan of that controversial label - often acted as backing musicians for various individuals' solo albums. So it was that the members of Ash Ra Tempel found themselves collaborating with their old bandmate Klaus Schulze during the recording of Walter Wegmüller's Tarot album. Some breaks came up in the recording schedule, so the old friends took the opportunity to record a new Ash Ra Tempel album in the meantime.

The two sides sum up the two creative minds at work here perfectly. Freak 'n' Roll sees Manual Gottsching's guitar skills taken to the fore, whilst Jenseits leans more towards Klaus's own compositional approach, an extended synthesiser-laden piece with Rosi's vocals emerging from an electronic haze. As far as Klaus Schulze synthesiser opuses backed with a female singer go, I tend to prefer his work with Lisa Gerrard, but it works reasonably well in this context.

Between these two tracks, Join Inn is a decent Ash Ra Tempel release that certainly outshines their other 1973 releases; in particular, it's the only one of their three albums from that year in which Ash Ra Tempel is actually allowed to take centre stage, since on Join Inn they were backing Timothy Leary and on Starring Rosi they were drafted in to act as a vehicle for Rosi Muller. At the same time, it doesn't seem to represent much musical development over their previous work, or what Klaus Schulze was doing in his solo career at the time for that matter, perhaps because of the rushed and spontaneous nature of the recording.