| # | Artist | Song (click to play) | Album | Year | CD label |
| 1 | Tangerine Dream | Fly and Collision of Coma Sola (excerpt) | Alpha Centauri | 1971 | Relativity |
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This is a spacey electronics album like no other I've heard. The massed
church-organ like keyboards gives the music a large open-spaced sound. It's
almost like an outer space mass. Simply amazing.
I can hear the influence that this album had on the Japanese progressive band
Far Out/Far East Family Band.
Tangerine Dream Home Page | |||||
| 2 | Faust | Miss Fortune (excerpt) | Faust | 1971 | Polydor |
| An influential krautrock album that is mostly known for it's studio tape manipulations. The underlying compositions are not particularly interesting to me, sometimes sounding like a psychedelic-tinged surf music or 60's West-coast psychedelia. Comparisons could be made to Can, Kraftwerk, Mothers of Invention. While, it is interesting to listen to, it has not had much of an impact on me, yet. Many consider this a classic. | |||||
| 3 | A.R. & Machines | (excerpt from side 1) | Die Grune Reise (The Green Journey) | 1971 | Polydor (LP only) |
| Experimental one-man musical project, with a little help from some friends. Mostly over-dubbed and echoing guitars, a little bit of bass guitar, vocals, and occasional percussion. This album is like a precursor of Ashra (Manuel Gottsching)'s guitar experiments, especially _Inventions for Electric Guitar_, or of Gunther Schickert's echo-guitar albums: Samtvogel, Uberfallig. The over-dubbed guitars are used to excellent effect creating a pleasant musical backdrop. But, the extended mouth noises on the 2nd side of the album is mostly silly. | |||||
| 4 | Eiliff | Journey to the Ego | Girlrls | 1972 | World Wide Records |
| This is Eiliff's second of only albums, except for the recently released live album _Close Encounter With Their Third One_. Another monsterously great album this is, too. A bit more psychedelic, improvisational, and jammy than the first, it seems. Phenomenal musicianship all around. The music has a slight Canterbury feel ala Brainstorm, Supersister. The Eiliff CD's seem to be in short supply these days! | |||||
| 5 | Popol Vuh | Ich mache einen Spiegel | Affenstunde | 1971 | Spalax |
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Popol Vuh, which is mainly the continuing musical expressions of keyboardist
Florian Fricke, on their first album present a dark and strange album of
Moog experimentations and eastern percussion. It is a decent album akin perhaps
to early Tangerine Dream, but, not the best place to start exploring Popol
Vuh.
Popol Vuh | |||||
| 6 | Xhol Caravan | All Green | Electrip | 1969 | Tripick (LP re-issue) |
| One of the first progressive classics from Germany, along with Amon Duul II's Phallus Dei. This is a complex jazz-rock progressive album in the vein of Soft Machine or Mothers of Invention, but with the beginnings of a new Krautrock sound. Xhol is a precursor and probably a big influence of German prog bands to follow like Kraan, Out of Focus, Release Music Orchestra, Ikarus. | |||||