Agitation Free
Malesch

Perhaps it is because in Berlin at the Aegyptisches Museum one can be enchanted and carried away by the incorruptible profile of Nefertiti, or because in the city's streets, you can, according to the immigrants themselves, enjoy the best kebab purchasable outside of Arabic countries, but in the German capital, a strong oriental wind sometimes blows, sparking in its already irrational inhabitants the urgent desire to travel far, physically or virtually. Fortunate, then, are Agitation Free, who in 1972 manage to embark on both types of journeys and deliver to us in this "Malesch" the cosmic/krautrock diary with a distinctly declared purpose of definitively abducting us from our seats.

Returning from a trip to Egypt, the Berlin group (of which, to be fair, is more often talked about for the fact of having passed on to Tangerine Dream the good Chris Franke - their former drummer - and temporarily also their synthesist Michael Hoenig) decides to create a kind of purely musical "blog": just as in electronic diaries one enjoys integrating statements, memories, photos taken during the last vacation, and various colors, Agitation Free channels their travel impressions into Malesch along with sound fragments recorded on the streets of Cairo and other stops on their itinerary, producing an "on the road" album unmatched and unmatchable in many ways. It happens that in the initial "You play for us today" one hears a band member addressing this very question to a group of street musicians, to then be projected into a psychedelic track halfway between Pink Floyd's "A Saucerful..." (though wisely less pompous), oriental scales, and west-coast spirit, ending with the percussion and Arab pipes of the aforementioned band. All of this without interruption and, surprisingly, without noticing we've moved from the street to the recording studio and vice versa!

This magic continues throughout the album, divided into songs as if they were chapters of a book, which still must be read and considered in its entirety (blessed be those who invented CDs for this reason!). So, between more rock/psychedelic tracks and cosmic/electronic passages, one may feel the sensation of walking through the most secret alleys of the Kasba, lying inside the enigmatic sarcophagus of the Great Pyramid, or setting up camp with a tribe of nomads in the middle of the Sahara. "Sahara City" captivates with its cosmic spirals, reminiscent of Tangerine Dream's "Atem," only to gently land us in a more decisive, exquisitely impressionistic rock. As if nothing happened, the group delights us with iterative keyboard structures in the style of Terry Riley in "Ala Tul" and the obsessive electronic, almost industrial progression - but actually very far from such a view - of "Pulse", where Hoenig's VCS3 gives us nervous and dynamic jolts, almost as if the score were written in an improbable 1/4 time signature. Thoughts seem to rise until they make us see the world from above with the well-managed echoes of "Khan el Khalili" and the free-form improvisation, never obsessive and truly dreamy, of the title track.

And while this latter fades into the sound of desert wind, one almost does not expect the decisive entry of a track like "Rücksturz", a hymn on the verge of lo-fi and proto-new-wave, simultaneously infused with strolls in the Tiergarten and whirlpools of people in any Middle Eastern Suq, so that the imaginary caravan of Agitation Free can end its journey in some place lost between our souls and distant lands...