The Cosmic Jokers
Gilles Zeitschiff

"Gilles Zeitschiff" is a bizarre, whimsical, and fascinating album. Just think that it includes not only the Cosmic Jokers but also Ash Ra Tempel, Gille Letmann, and various guests. Moreover, it's a collection of previously recorded tracks, all remixed with the addition of spoken voices: that of the Star Girl on the cover narrating, in a very self-celebratory way, the journey of the Cosmic Couriers up to that point. This album seems to be a faded memory album, or rather, tainted by acidic colors that have completely altered its nature.

The album begins, and there it is, that female voice announcing against a very Schulz-like background, the various names that make up the couriers. All in a row, one after the other for more than seven minutes: Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Timothy Leary, Walter Wegmuller, with a macabre effect that sends shivers down your spine. It seems like a roll call of names so heavy that they influence and unsettle the music and atmosphere around them. Then everything becomes clearer. Ash Ra Tempel and Timothy Leary step forward, and here's "Downtown" which opened the concept of Space in Seven Up, intensified by an echo effect that creates tangible reverberations as if we could touch them. Then, without a real end from one song to the next, we move on to a solemn "Lord Krishna" and then, like a boat adrift in a sea too vast for it, echoes of Leary return from Seven Up with "Power Drive" which fades into yet another vocal part of that mysterious Girl guiding us to a place that unfortunately does not admit guides. And then from the abstract, "Right Hand Lover" reemerges, just to give us the impression of not being completely lost, like a familiar image to us, yet scattered in a place inaccessible to man. We then come to glimpse "Cosmic Courier Bon Chance" announced again by our speaker, who is unexpectedly joined by another male voice: it's Brian Barritt explaining the music of the cosmic couriers and especially the effects they have on our psyche, while in the background echoes of Downtown mixed with Schulze's synthesizers seem to underscore what Brian is saying, as if even an organ couldn't better underscore the last words before the apocalypse. And the music becomes abstract again, echoing in a void filled only by the vocal interjections of the star maiden, until reaching the final masterpiece: "Electronic Rock Zeitalter". A pearl from the bottom of the sea, or space, it's an incredibly constant mantra, that imprisons yet another nod to Seven Up. But not just any nod, as already in Seven Up it was a nod itself from "Suche & Liebe". Yes, exactly, it’s still Her. That progression of chords, now elected mythical, is always there, this time accompanied by Brian Barritt and Timothy Leary who intervene on it, creating an unreal, magnificent atmosphere.

In short, more than a proper album, this seems like a collection of pieces, fused together at high temperatures, mixed with the director’s commentary and an explanatory voice-over, intervening in bursts, so that we don't get lost physically. Because the Self, our psyche, that will surely be carried away who knows where, it may return, yes, but it will never be the same again. Word of the Cosmic Couriers. Amen.