This strange summer, lazy yet so busy, I'm grooving, deeply, lovingly & aurally grooving into so-called "Krautrock" more than ever... more these days than when in my teens wasn't only "cool" listening to this Cosmik Music from Germany, but "natural".
Popol Vuh, Amon Duul, Can, Faust, Tangerine Dream, Neu!, Cluster, Ash Ra Tempel, LA Dusseldorf, Moebius & Plank , Walter Wegmuller, Sergius Golowin, Witthuser & Westrupp... many of these I was listening about 35 years ago, some have been a recent discovery, thanks to Julian Cope and his Krautrock Sampler essay on Kosmische Musik... I'll be always in debt with Julian...
I'm right now listening to the Zappa-esque "Soon over Babaluma" by Can... the music is complex, yet easy... the wonderful technique the top musicians use is so music friendly you can't think they're playing virtuoso solos on their instruments... they build a mood, a new world like few others... like Capt. Beefheart and his Magick Band in Trouth Mask Replica, Lick my decals Off, Baby et al.
... they let you feel world isn't a place of tracks, but of layers, infinite layers where you could take a shower of red water looking at a green sky and you can whistle Penderecki and Cage's music, eat a blue steak in the morning and have a yellow cappucino for dinner, loving and hating with same intensity and trueness, where an hour is an eternity... and no dope involved.
First Incredible String Band's records where like this, like Tim Buckley's, or the recently found Patrick Kilroy alone or with his mate Susan Graubard's "New Age"... BUT people from Germany found the core for a direct link with pure spirit, the essence of ideas, new and old mixed to a completely new degree of consciousness in creativeness... no wannabes, covers, market laws, records selling...
I just listened to Witthuser & Westrupp "Trips & Traume"... in "Trippo Nova" and "Orienta" I heard young minds blending together shamelessly to create a picture of a magic moment, end '60, last century, when people wanted changes, better life, enjoying their lives, peace...
... how, HOW can I be an audiophile if I love this imperfect music so much?
Who care "imaging" if I get my daily fix in emotions & lively music from my audio "time-machine" system?
... and what's, anyway, an audio system, by the way, if not a Magick Machine which makes you enter in contact with all those dead geniuses and heroes... how in the world would you otherwise listen to Nick Drake, Jim Morrison, John Fahey, Sandy Denny, Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Florian Fricke, Tim Buckley, Robbie Basho and many more?
... that's it... simple, yet complex... in the meantime, buy the titles I quoted, Julian Cope's book and buy Can's "Ege Bamyasi" and also the humble "Soon over Babaluma"... not Can's best, not Can's most famous... BUT such a great music, pals... I'm in tears... it's sincere, pure, various, imperfect like Man is... I feel at home, having my "Soundtrack for the Moment".
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