Ash Ra Tempel
Ash Ra Tempel

Imagine whatever you want: a space-time journey to Tutankhamun's Egypt, an intergalactic cruise towards alien stars, a freaking dark sick nightmare. You are aboard a nuclear missile ready to explode, destination infinity.

"Amboss" occupies the entire A-side and is a giant multi-headed monster, a hallucination beyond the sound barriers. Yet it starts quietly, slyly slipping for several minutes slowly creating an atmosphere. When Klaus Schulze's drums come into play, you don't even notice, but the nightmare has already become reality. And damn it, when Ash Ra Tempel really start getting into it, there's no stopping them; they strip your skin off, they short-circuit your brain.

Manuel Göttsching is the greatest kraut guitarist and when he staged this huge instrumental jam, he was high, and badly. Yes, because to play with such visionary naturalness and fluidity you have to be necessarily unsynchronized from the real world. He has no respect for You-Ignorant-Listener; after exhausting you with piercing dissonances and unbearable ice blades of feedback, he suddenly brings you back into calm waters as if nothing happened, only to overwhelm you with a sudden wave of distorting and furious rhythm accelerations.
Now, if this track doesn't drive you crazy, I don't know what the hell can. It's stuff that melts your brain and turns your gut, that makes fun of you. Yes, it really takes the piss out of you; you're there trying to keep up with the rhythm and follow the elusive notes; and maybe you also think you're succeeding! In fact, while you're at it, you think it's a good idea to stick your head well between the two speakers so you can better distinguish the various instruments as they intertwine wildly...

Stop, don't do it!
Don't do it if you don't want to fry your brain. I'm warning you, this is one of the most extreme cosmic trips, it's dangerous music. Be very careful not to get involved and DO NOT LISTEN TO IT ALONE if you care about your sanity! "Amboss" is something totally OUT there, in every sense. Ash Ra Tempel have set off towards Andromeda and will not return.

Listening to the B-side is a completely different experience: it's like floating dead weight in the abyss of nothingness. We are ultra-millennial corpses sucked in by the gravity of a black hole, orbiting the rings of a remote planet. Interstellar space is empty, darkness and nothingness are the lords of the universe. "Traummaschine" is an endless epic, a fragment of the darkness that envelops galaxies. It's a dark vision, what will more fully become Schulze's Irrlicht.

Now do yourself a favor and get this record any way you can; turn off the light, fasten your seatbelt and prepare for the hyperspace launch.