ASH RA TEMPEL

Space rock meditation at the extreme end of the scale is what you find here on two delicious lengthy tracks full of violently sonic repetition and a sound that had huge influences on the up and coming Krautrock bands of the 70s. It is impossible to pinpoint how influential this 1971 album was and still is but it certainly impacted the early stages of prog rock. Basically the music can only be described as a journey through dark atmospheres and ominous moods. The existentialist frame work of things in order and the shadowy realm of the unseen may be the conceptual key to the album, but to others it may seem like a meandering drone designed for LSD users who desire an hallucinatory soundscape for their fix. The discordance or unmusicality will definitely turn many off though obviously others will indulge in the pleasure of the altered fractured sounds. It is almost impossible to describe the cinematic images that are engrained in the mind listening to "Traummaschine", as the sounds transport one to outer or inner space. It would make an intriguing soundtrack for "2001: a Space Odyssey" or "Moon".

The band members consist of Manuel Göttsching on guitar, vocal intonations and electronic effects. He is joined by the extraordinary talents of Hartmut Enke on pulsating bass. The member that brings all the spacey noise to some kind of order is Klaus Schulze, who is of course a legend in his own right, or in his own mind, and he is amazing on percussion and electronic embellishments; he reminds me of Christian Vander at times on this. Often there is no beat, no rhythm and no substance, rather an organic lengthy gradually building ominous cacophony of sound. At times there is a specific spacey squealing guitar over a driving beat that reminds me of classic Hawkwind's "Space Ritual". It feels very improvised as far as the lead guitar is concerned, similar to Hawkwind, especially on "Amboss", but the rhythms are broken with some sporadic drumming and splashing cymbals taking the sound into new directions. The unearthly psychotronic hypnotic music of Ash Ra Temple is quite unsettling at times, certainly is an acquired taste, and is likely to send you into a trance. For those with a proclivity for Tangerine Dream's 'Phaedra' or Pink Floyd's early phase with 'Careful With that Axe Eugene' or 'Interstellar Overdrive', there is no doubt the album will appeal. It is not the type of music I relish but it certainly is different and one may actually enjoy it's spellbinding magnetism. Personally it is a little too weird for my senses, but I am still in awe of the original approach and downright audacity of the band to generate such an extreme form of music.