ASH RA TEMPEL

The career of Ash Ra Tempel begins with sorrowful, slow, quiet and soft drones, rising from void slowly and peacefully, full with yearning. As they reach out from the stagnant basic tune, drums start to escalate with primitive patterns, and soon the calm space starts to resemble the instrumental part of Jimi Hendrix Experience's song "I Don't Live Today". This is not the most successful of their improvisations, but maybe they were still learning here, and the jam has very good parts in it still. Especially in the end of "Amboss" Manuel Göttsching truly shines along with Klaus Schulze.

The second song "Traummaschine" begins with Tangerine Dream reminding surreal and ethereal wall of sounds. This large calm space has also probably some Mellotron choirs in it, which paint an aural fresco of pure harmony. There are very delicate movements here, and it's a beautiful contrast to their chaotic and atavistic rock element, as these two opposing styles create wonderful and imaginative patterns when clashing. Later a surrealistic, mysterious rock improvisation arises. This is not as aggressive voyage as the first side of this LP, and after about ten minutes the sounds slowly fade back to the emptiness where they came.

Overall this is quite similar album as their forthcoming "Join Inn" record, as they both have only two tracks filling both sides of the album. Also in both cases the first song is more aggressive beatnik rock improvisation, and the second one is an ethereal realm of sounds. This is a very good album, but "Join Inn" menaces my mind still as a much better LP.