Emtidi
Saat

THE REVIEW

The pop discography since the 1960s has been characterized not only by musical innovation but also by the need to make a product immediately recognizable from a graphic standpoint: enticing covers, often themed with the musical scene to which the record belonged, soon led to the creation of specialized sub-labels, aimed at distancing themselves from more mainstream offerings. Leaving aside the case of APPLE, the Beatles' legend that was able to properly handle only the raw materials of the Fab Four, it was Decca that inaugurated a label associating it with the new post-beat sprouts and blazing stereophonic technology, the DERAM. Since then, other majors followed suit, with the VERTIGO spiral, the oblique HARVEST, the Botticellian NEON, and the wonderland CHARISMA, all icons of Progressive Rock par excellence. Their impact would result in replicating the same marketing strategy in continental Europe, where fertile ground needed the appropriate fertilizer, and Germany proved to be the best granary. In 1970, the Basf record executives brought to life a turntable amanita muscaria, the PILZ, an underground offshoot with great commercial hopes, convincing the renowned musicologist ROLF-ULRICH KAISER to take on the artistic direction. In reality, the label published only about twenty albums, with limited sales success but high musical quality and several masterpieces, some of which still shine under their own light today. 

The brief story of EMTIDI begins with the meeting of two flower children in London: DOLLY HOLMES, Canadian, and MAIK HIRSCHFELDT, German. They soon moved to Berlin to perform in clubs as a folk duo, managing to also record an album on a private label, an acoustic debut not particularly interesting, but an essential calling card that would lead them directly to the Kaiser's court. It is here that the transformation occurs: the recording studios of the great DIETER DIERKS, a sort of mecca for Avantgarde, trip-jamming, and psychedelic spontaneity, are soft cushions where one can rest and produce undisturbed, with Herr Kaiser lovingly illuminating them from behind the control desk. The recordings are exactly 40 years ago, an unrepeatable February 1972... and here the team produces a masterpiece, folk sheds its shell and offers itself to posterity in an electro-acoustic form with the extreme balance between experimentation and rationality. The memories of Swinging London are perhaps found in the lyrics, filled with naiveté and which today might make one smile, enigmatic and naive at the same time: "Don't sit on the grass, it's too cold for your ass!" repeated in two voices in WALKIN' IN THE PARK serves exactly its purpose and transports the song from a suave melodic intro to a succession of ever-faster cosmic waves, counterpoints of phased-guitar that whirl away. TRAUME is indeed a dream, it unfolds lightly between Holmes's pure vocals and her hypnotic keyboards, towards unknown and fulfilling lands, preceding TOUCH THE SUN, a great episode of the album and of the entire contemporary German scene, difficult to describe in words, sensations speed upwards in almost 12 minutes: a dreamy intro, mystical words fly over a carpet of undulating keyboards, various changes lead to fast travel until reaching the sun, and wonderment in being able to touch it. The finale is a magnificent return home after the experience, wonderful minutes with VCS3 and mellotron accompanying beautifully, finally waking up on a sunny beach, the seagulls welcoming you back. After all this, LOVE TIME RAIN might seem like an orthodox ballad in its straightforwardness, and indeed here one might indulge in the comparison with label mates HOELDERLIN, less adventurous but equally great. SAAT, which means sowing in German, is another ballad, celebrating the rite of fertility, whose duet touches perfection, and maintains that continuity which is bluntly broken in DIE RIESE, a long epilogue sung in German by Hirschfeldt in a comedian's manner; here too, the sound evolves thanks to organistic evolutions that are never pretentious, and which return the atmosphere to the usual canons of cosmic diversions with which the album is rich in its suspended integrity.

Perhaps this duo did not realize the enormous depth that permeated the record, and the spell broke immediately after, with Holmes returning to Canada and Hirschfeldt wandering in search of a valid musical discourse, but such a partner is not found every day... he too would eventually give up.

The album has been defined as the first and perhaps only example of true Cosmic Folk, loved by collectors and omnivores of the unclassifiable.

To me, they remain the Adam and Eve of electro-acoustic experimentation.