MUSIC

‘Born out of the 2020/21 lockdowns, a small window over New Year’s Eve gave four friends a chance to come out of isolation and play music together. Sat up on the lush Bilgola hills, the first Posm jams came to fruition and cemented a desire for further collaboration. Over the next two months Posm became an obsessive catharsis for socially starved marsupials, with free flowing live improvisations combining electroni- ca and organic instruments, psychedelic bushwalks and playing host to the Bilgan birds and critters. This is Posm, with the birds.’ All tracks produced and mixed by Jackson Fester at the Hudson Hideout & Bilga Tops. Instruments performed by David Williams, Gabriel Portocarrero, Ryan Thomas, Oscar Henfrey and Jackson Fester.

Kraftwerk is the self-titled debut album by the Düsseldorf band Kraftwerk. It was produced by Conny Plank and released in 1970. LP on 180-gram vinyl with gatefold sleeve.

Legendary German post-rock band formed in 1971 by undisputed noise pioneer Uwe Nettelbeck, Faust garnered an immediate following due to its artistically extreme experimentations with music cut ups and other mixed sources hinging on cacophony and distortion. Don't miss their 1971 cult classic debut, now reissued with its original clear printed sleeve on 180 gram clear vinyl.

A.R. & Machines is the solo project of one Achim Reichel. Released in 1971 the album still retains a magical touch. Ranked between the most original kraut albums of all the time, Die Grune Reise (aka The Green Journey) really is a trip. Turning his back to the original beat movement, Reichel embraced the infinity of a multi-layered sound, experiencing the most prolific path of prog rock while joining the obscure meanders of the lysergic renaissance.

Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings release, 1982’s Nodal Excitation – in effect, looking beneath the hood of several decades of progression to review and renew the revolutionary intent of their microntonal foundation credo. This new Orchestra – Oren Ambarchi, Konrad Sprenger and Joachim Schütz – combine effortlessly to explore new scalar dimensions. PLAY LOUD.

YĪN YĪN, the highly touted Dutch quartet from Maastricht, returns with a sonically expansive third album Mount Matsu. Recorded collectively in their own studio in the Belgian countryside, the album is a kaleidoscope of sounds and influences, occupying a no man’s land between Khruangbin and Kraftwerk, surf music and Southeast Asian psychedelia, Stax soul and mutant 80s disco, City pop and Japanese instrumental folk (sōkyoku). Mount Matsu sees YĪN YĪN at their most mature and adventurous stage yet. Infectious pentatonic melodicism calling for multiple rewinds.

For anyone who still associates Oren Ambarchi exclusively with the clipped, bass-heavy tones of solo electric guitar works such as Suspension, this rhythmically churning one-man-band monster of an album-length piece might seem to come out of nowhere. However, listeners who have followed the breadth of his work for the last few years (solo and in projects with collaborators from Jim O’Rourke to Stephen O’Malley and Keith Rowe to Keiji Haino) will have noted how Ambarchi has allowed increasingly clear traces of his enthusiasms as a music listener (for classic rock, minimal techno and 70’s fusion, among other areas) to surface in his performances and recordings, all the time filtering them through his signature long-form structures and psychoacoustic sonics. Recorded in a single inspired studio session, Sagittarian Domain displaces Ambarchi’s trademark guitar sound from the centre of the mix, its presence felt only as an occasional ghostly reverberated shimmer. Endlessly pulsating guitar and bass lines sit alongside electronic percussion and thundering motorik drumming (familiar from his work with Keiji Haino) at the core of the piece, locking into a voodoo groove like Faust covering a 70’s cop show theme. The work is founded on hypnotic almost-repetition, the accents of the drum hits and interlocking bass and guitar lines shifting almost imperceptibly back and forwards over the beat as they undergo gradual transformations of timbre. Cut-up and phase-shifted strings enter around the half-way mark like an abstracted memory of the eastern-tinged fusion of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s classic Visions of the Emerald Beyond, before returning for an extended, stark yet affecting come-down coda, equal parts Gavin Bryars and Purple Rain. While Sagittarian Domain contains traces of a diversity of influences, it mines all of them to uncover something that is clearly an extension of Ambarchi’s own investigations up to this point, exhibiting the same care for micro-detail and surrender to the physicality of sound that are present in all of his work, extending them in new ways to repetition, pulse and rhythm Francis Plagne

This is long overdue. I mean, looooooonnnnnng overdue. A solo album by Jim [White]. The trap kit -- so straightforward, so mysterious. What's inside those things? Air and light -- from which century? Which continent? Which planet? Depending on how and when you hit them it can be a vibration sent through a prehistoric breath, particles of Saturn's atmosphere, the dead, wet leaves you walked through on the way to the first day of school. These are the memories of the drums on this record. Infinite and personal. Editing each other as they muscle to the front or soft shoe to the shadow. Cymbals can override/cancel everything out -- wipe your memory clear or make the memory clearer. Drums are the instrument where you can feel the presence of the player the most -- the full body -- and sense the thoughts of the player the most. The instrument with the most choices to be made sends out the most brainwaves. A bouquet of brainwaves is on this LP. Jim oversees it all, surveys from the lost place we're in, the void -- the drumless song. We trust. We trust, Jim. His big green eyes search for the right tool (mallet, brush, etc), eyes that search you like you're a song he wants to join, wants to see if he can add to or understand. Before humans, drums were playing -- these drums. 'Genesis' was a solo drum piece. After humans, these drums, this album. Someone -- the last man -- is out in a spaceship at the edge of space. He plays a single chord on a synth to set time free from its bind and then lets go. This album sets time free, lets it frolic, lets it graze, lets it remember. This is a record of thoughts, memories, surgery. A deft surgical operation you may not even realize is happening as it's happening but you're back on your feet when it's over. Memories refreshed. Did you really even listen to it?

Minami Deutsch is back at it again with their latest LP "With Dim Light". Whilst softening their sound and cushioning the blow, you can expect a more profound diversity in their sound, whilst retaining the principle ingredients that make Minami Deutsch so great such as their signature fuzz, thumping bass and dream like vocals. There is a heavier experimentation in regards to genre exploration. With hints of post punk and nods to late 60s psychedelic rock, this shows that Minami Deutsch is willing to push musical boundaries further whilst retaining a clever songwriting ability to achieve this album Minami Deutsch is back at it again with their latest LP "With Dim Light". Whilst softening their sound and cushioning the blow, you can expect a more profound diversity in their sound, whilst retaining the principle ingredients that make Minami Deutsch so great such as their signature fuzz, thumping bass and dream like vocals. There is a heavier experimentation in regards to genre exploration. With hints of post punk and nods to late 60s psychedelic rock, this shows that Minami Deutsch is willing to push musical boundaries further whilst retaining a clever songwriting ability to achieve this album

Six years have passed since Swiss-based duo Klaus Johann Grobe’s last long player “Du bist so symmetrisch” (2018) and you’ll hear they’ve come a long way. “Io tu il loro”, their fourth album for Chicago-based Trouble In Mind Records was written over two weeks in a cabin at the very end of a remote Swiss valley, where - pretty much at the same place - Klaus Johann Grobe came up with their whole debut full-length “Im Sinne der Zeit” album in 2014. What started out as simply making music again quickly turned into seriously making a new album. Once decided, the whole thing was finished rather quickly and recorded once again at David Langhard’s Dala Studio at the end of 2022. “Io tu il loro” is a record that cannot be done by endlessly fiddling around with hundreds of ideas and sounds. All it needed was a real break (Dani and Sevi didn’t work on any Grobe-related stuff until they met up in the mountains in 2022). It’s an album with a blurry vision and soft limitations. You can somehow feel them looking back on all their work forgivingly and then moving on to what felt right. So here we are with nine tracks full of embracing warmth, so melancholicly welcoming you don’t know if you want to smile or cry. Some might call it timeless, some might call it dad-rock... well, it certainly isn’t disco for the masses, it’s more like, “If I can’t make myself dance after four beers, I can as well go home.” So, no disco? No syncopated synths? No German? No reverb? Where’s The Grobe? Take your time, you’ll notice Klaus Johann Grobe aren’t gone, they just took a turn before driving yet into another unknown.

Ash Ra Tempel is the eponymous debut studio album by the Krautrock band Ash Ra Tempel. It features guitarist Manuel Göttsching with drummer Klaus Schulze and bassist Hartmut Enke. Engineered by Conny Plank it was recorded in March 1971 and released in June 1971 on Ohr Records. This 50Th Anniversary Album will be Released in Memoriam of all the Musical Contributors to this Release and on Manuel Göttsching´s MG.ART label. It´s the fourth and headlining edition in this series and was finalised, carefully overseen by Manuel Göttsching himself in the late Autumn of 2022. Much has been written about the record and band. Having finished a first musical chapter with their Steeple Chase Bluesband and still at very young age of only 17 and 18 years old Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke met Klaus Schulze. Together they started to write and and compose what, to many, became one the holy grails of Psychedelic Rock and early Electronic Music - the German variant which was later also named "Krautrock": Ash Ra Tempel´s self-titled first album "Ash Ra Tempel". "The trio of Klaus Schulze, Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke decided to abandon conventional composition and song writing, in favour of free-form improvising and developing a new musical language. As such, they became notorious for jams that could exceed 30 minutes." Says Discogs. "Some of these recordings can be found on Manuel Göttsching´s "The Private Tapes" releases", which will be re-released on MG.ART as well, following this edition. "Krautrocksampler" author Julian Cope mentioned it to be "… one of the greatest rock 'n' roll LPs ever made." (Julian Cope Presents Head Heritage | Unsung | Reviews | Ash Ra Tempel - Ash Ra Tempel". 15 March 2000.) AllMusic called the album "both astonishingly prescient and just flat out good, a logical extension of the space-jam-freakout ethos into rarified realms." Here we would like the Band to be heard, for what can easily be said as the first time in 50+ years, with the exception of some early Journalists for whom the young Manuel Göttsching wrote a statement of intent (the original text can be found inside this edition) as following: "Our musical concept is based on a combination of blues rock and delicate collages of electronic sound. These two elements should remain inseparable. And in their complex unity, the different musical philosophies of each musician find a common sweet spot. Our music is a permanently impulsive experience left to develop as it will, starting from a common fixed point of departure. This is where the difficulty of the music begins: No standardized formulation of our music can and should be possible. Only the constant reaction within the band can determine the musical result. And this requires constant listening with full concentration on the part of the creators. The idea of a particular musician will be - if flexible enough - absorbed by the others, transposed to their own instrument, and reflected back into the music as an individual contribution. This reciprocity within the band is then transferred over to the audience. And this process means that their reaction is not only a contribution to the end result; it actually makes them jointly responsible for the creation of the final musical product. … On our album, the track "Amboss" represents the first layer. Conventional instruments communicate familiar music which is in part expanded through electronic means. In the second track of the album - "Traummaschine" - the actual basic sound approach is dissolved into an electronic Nirvana which no longer allows the concrete identification of actual instruments. Innocent, virgin listening, free from any and every association, can finally begin - and the music can be absorbed and processed free from the limitations of categorization. That is the purpose of our music: To convey freedom without any predetermined criteria or traditions. Thank you for your attention." (Taken from the original A-R-T Bio 1970) Hartmut Enke, Manuel Göttsching and Klaus Schulze aka. Ash Ra Tempel travelled to Hamburg in March 1971 to record their debut, with assistance of another Icon, legendary engineer Conny Plank. The rest is history.

Cluster was the pioneering German duo of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius. Formed on the cusp of the 1970s, they were a part of West Germany's nascent Kosmische Musik scene. The group would use restrained improvisational techniques similar to Gruppo Nuova Consonanza, working with both electric and acoustic instruments (organ, guitar, tone generators, cello, etc.) to create a singular sound that Julian Cope called "a huge beating heart, planet-sized and awesome." Originally released in 1972 on Brain, Cluster II features six pieces of atmospheric, proto-ambient drones – a step up from Cluster's 1971 self-titled debut, which had all untitled songs. On "Im Suden," hypnotic bass pulsations and repetitive guitar patterns flow serenely, while side two opener "Live In Der Fabrik" dives deep into Roedelius and Moebius' foreboding industrial soundscapes and synergistic textural interplay. As Roedelius told Uncut magazine in 2022, "This feels like a breakthrough? Well, we were just getting more into it, and getting more experienced at being able to elaborate it. Conny (Plank) was working with us again – as well as being a multi-talented artist, he was a very experienced sound master and great human being. He contributed as a fellow musician, adding sounds with his mixing table such as reverb, delay and other effects enriching the whole pieces so that they finally became somehow unique." It's no surprise that when Neu! guitarist Michael Rother first heard Cluster II, he suggested a collaboration with the band – resulting in the supergroup Harmonia who would make their first album together the following year.

Black Market Brass is proud to present Hox, due out on Colemine Records on September 8, 2023. Their third LP is a new take on afrobeat that combines traditional grooves with heavy, hypnotic, sci-fi sounds that reflect the band’s myriad of influences as record collectors across genres. “We didn’t leave the traditional afro-beat sound behind, but we did allow ourselves to pull from different places with less hesitation.” Shared saxophonist Cole Pulice. Like their previous albums, the 9-piece band recorded Hox live to tape. “The sound and aesthetic of the analog recording process is important for this kind of music,” Pulice explained. “We’re looking to capture lightning in a bottle.” With that, the album features several sections of heavily processed synthesizers, harsh glitches, fuzzed out guitars, and a burning percussion section that pays homage to the traditional drumming cultures of Nigeria and Ghana. The performances are dynamic and confident. The grooves are infectious and hypnotic. BMB has pushed further into musical experimentalism, but at the end of the day, they’re still making dance music. Krautrock, free-jazz, doom metal – the inspirations for Hox stem from all kinds of musical backgrounds, but the sound is far from scattered. It’s a polished, innovative record that’s sure to exceed expectations and keep the listener engaged from start to finish.

Black Market Brass is proud to present Hox, due out on Colemine Records on September 8, 2023. Their third LP is a new take on afrobeat that combines traditional grooves with heavy, hypnotic, sci-fi sounds that reflect the band’s myriad of influences as record collectors across genres. “We didn’t leave the traditional afro-beat sound behind, but we did allow ourselves to pull from different places with less hesitation.” Shared saxophonist Cole Pulice. Like their previous albums, the 9-piece band recorded Hox live to tape. “The sound and aesthetic of the analog recording process is important for this kind of music,” Pulice explained. “We’re looking to capture lightning in a bottle.” With that, the album features several sections of heavily processed synthesizers, harsh glitches, fuzzed out guitars, and a burning percussion section that pays homage to the traditional drumming cultures of Nigeria and Ghana. The performances are dynamic and confident. The grooves are infectious and hypnotic. BMB has pushed further into musical experimentalism, but at the end of the day, they’re still making dance music. Krautrock, free-jazz, doom metal – the inspirations for Hox stem from all kinds of musical backgrounds, but the sound is far from scattered. It’s a polished, innovative record that’s sure to exceed expectations and keep the listener engaged from start to finish.

Ash Ra Tempel's fourth LP marked something of a pause, a recap, especially after the surprising Seven Up (which featured Timothy Leary as a guest). The temporary return of Klaus Schulze also greatly contributes to this feeling of summation. The album features two side-long pieces that represent literally two sides of the band, the Krautrock and space music incarnations. "Freak 'n' Roll" is a 19-minute hard-hitting jam, with Schulze bashing away behind the drums and Manuel Gottsching churning some mean guitar riffs while Harmut Enke ploughs heavy basslines. The track is actually an excerpt from a longer improvisation and begins with a fade in that throws the listener in the middle of an already heated session. Long but hardly long-winded, this track deserves a place alongside Can's "You Do Right" and Faust's "Krautrock": it has the drive, the psychedelic appeal, and the creativity of what epitomized the Krautrock style in the minds of young Englishmen and Americans for a while. The 24-minute "Jenseits" sees Schulze at the Synthi A and the organ, weaving dreamy drones and uplifting chords for Gottsching to doodle over. Enke's lines are not always as relevant as one would wish, and Rosi Mueller's soft-spoken narration seems to get in the way during the first few minutes -- in short, this is not Ash Ra Tempel at their ethereal best, but it's still a fine exercise in late-night musical dreaming that will appeal to fans of Phaedra-era Tangerine Dream while not misrepresenting that aspect of the group's work. And put together, those two pieces make a very fine introduction to the first few years of Ash Ra Tempel. ~ Francois Couture

Mioclono started at the end of 2016 when Oriol Riverola and Arnau Obiols did their first recording session at Angel Sound Studios in Barcelona, assisted by engineer Miquel Mestres. This became a tradition and they kept doing these recording sessions every end of the year. The present album is the result of the first recording session in 2016 and during the following months, the duo met up several times and over-dubbed those early recordings. Later it was mixed and mastered later on by Gordon Pohl in Düsseldorf, Germany. The project is named Mioclono because both Arnau and Oriol had been diagnosed with epilsepsy, a neurological disorder that affects the electrical activity in the brain. Given this coincidence, their moniker takes the name in Spanish of myoclonus. Ilustration of the front and back covers by Helga Juárez Inner sleeves and labels design by Guillermo Lucenas

After the 2021 Re-Release of “Schwingungen” (MG.ART612) we proudly announce “Seven Up” as Part 2 of the authorised 50th Anniversary “A.R.T.” Re-Edition Series. “Seven Up” is the third studio album by Ash Ra Tempel and their only album recorded in collaboration with American Ph.D. in psychology, Dr. Timothy Leary. The Coverart for “Seven Up” was designed by famous Swiss Artist Walter Wegmüller. Recorded in August 1972 at Sinus Studio in Berne, Switzerland, remixed September 1972 at Dierks Studios in Stommeln, Germany. First release in spring 1973 by OHR Musik - the first release on the new sub-label "Kosmische Kuriere", Kat-Nr. KK 58001. We release “Seven Up” in a Re-Cut carefully overseen by Manuel Göttsching himself, on September 9th 2022, also being Manuel Göttsching´s 70th Birthday. Our Edition features the full original text for the “7 levels of consciousness” by Timothy Leary in English, i.e. “Instruction Manual for Pleasure Panel” plus a previously unreleased glimpse view of the original scripts incl. notes and mark ups as well as partly unreleased photos from the recording session. ->continued on page 2->continued on page 2 As for the music itself we again refer to Julian Cope´s review and remarks from his book “Krautrocksampler” (published by Head Heritage, 1st ed. 1995): “When the Leary Mob met the Kaiser Gang, the sparks flew ever Up-wards... 7up is a stone classic in every way. Yes, it is unlikely to find Timothy Leary singing lead vocal in a cosmic group, but even weirder that he chose to sing a wild yelping freaked out blues ! Manuel Göttsching and Hartmut Enke had begun their careers in The Steeple Chase Blues Band back in the mid-'60ies, and they quickly felt their way through what Barritt and Leary were aiming for. They reconciled it all as a kind of West Coast chordless psychedelia, where blues riffs sparkle out of nowhere and the sheer weight of synthesizers renders everything with an unreal Pere Ubu/early Roxy Music quality. The greatness of Ash Ra Tempel burned so brightly on 7Up that there is really nothing else like it. Hartmut Enke and Manuel Gottsching here returned to their riffy roots. It can hardly be called a retro act, though, as the context of music is everything. And with Dierks at the controls, even the New Kids on the Block would have sounded psychedelic. 7Up is like a late night radio show glimpsed through a shattered tuner where all but the most truly dangerous sounds have been allowed to stay, to drift and to dance around the performers. The result is an extreme gem, a flash of hysterical white lightning, and a pre-punk Technicolour yawn in the grandest of traditions. In typical Ash Ra Tempel style, the record is divided into two pieces, “Space” and "Time”. Within this, though, Timothy Leary’s ideas are allowed to free-flow and the two sides are therefore divided into mini-songs all segued together. The highlight of Side 1 is “Power Drive”, a West Coast burn-up that transcends any W. Coast music I ever did hear. Leary and Barritt present the greatest twin-vocal of all time, coming on like Jagger and Morrison but too caught up in their own maelstrom to be anything less than Heralds of the Punkfuture still five years away. In chaos it was conceived and in chaos it was recorded. Yet Dieter Dierks, the great Aural Architect of the Cosmic Couriers, turned 7Up into a personal triumph and a Kosmische dream.”

Sergeant is the avant-pop band of composing cineast Benjamin Cools and search-singing actor Ferre Marnef. For a long time they only burst out exclusively on stage, but now they have gathered their sampled selves at the abyss of pop music anyway. The songs on the record sound like a "date gone wrong" between post-punk and krautrock, but mostly like the kind of indie rock that Warp thought was cool for a very brief time in the 00s. Through the Paris of the 70s (Gainsbourg!) and the industrial Ruhr, they take you on a trip brimming with Dadaist collages and abstract punk. Their self-titled debut is released by the Ostend-based experimental music label STROOM, run by Ziggy Devriendt (aka Nosedrip). For this record, the musicians sampled themselves - Sergeant calls that method DJ Shadow in reverse. From their archive, they drew a mountain of analog loops, which they then meticulously montaged into nine poetic songs. In the tracks, 1 Fender Mustang, 1 Microkorg, 1 Rdr Rhythm DR-670 and dozens of flutes are ground through effects, processors and DIY recording techniques. For Cools and Marnef, making music is getting sound layers and textures moving. Like editing a movie, Sergeant cuts the sonic scenes into one. 
 Sergeant's home base is Brussels, the metropolis on the verge of bankruptcy, and that is audible in the density and rushy contrasts on this pop record. Cools and Marnef operate in the world of film, theater and music. Previously they have been involved with bands such as Soldier's Heart and De Nooit Moede, and in theater they share a history with Tibaldus, Desnor, Bosse Provoost, Ezra Veldhuis, Buren, ... 
 The mixing is the work of the Antwerp godchild Milan Warmoeskerken (Milan W.) who produced other people's music for the first time. With his eye for detail and balance, he created a deeper layer in Sergeant's music.

Twoonky, the brothers duo from Brescia (Italy) formed by Michele and Simone Bornati, is back on Macadam Mambo for a second album. After their brillantissimo ‘Dezzo’ from 2019, which was well noticed by the underground scene, the new opus ‘Ottico’ won’t leave you static. This is the kind of masterpiece that the more you listen, the more you love. At the opposite of grandiloquent music that would have immediate effect, ‘Ottico’ is much more subtile, surfing on a cool wave of styles, a collage of vibes going from 70’s Kraut to 90’s Trip-Hop, where the analog sounds of guitars, synths, distorded voices, saxo, samples and electronics FX match so well, creating an ensemble in the unique mutant flow of the Twoonky’s that makes it so intemporal and so modern in the meanwile. It’s not about being curious, it’s about being open on crossing boundaries, like they are used to do with their unique place called Spettro in Brescia, where all the avant-garde of the electronic scene is coming to perform. ‘Ottico’ could be a kind of representation of the spirit of Spettro, and possibly one of the most interesting release of 2023. We don’t know why, but it’s true, Italians do it better ☺

Minami Deutsch 3rd full studio album "Fortune Goodies" "Everyone has their own imagination about outer space, and each one us gets to daydream about what exactly floats or exists there. ‘Fortune Goodies’ is Minami Deutsch’s long-awaited 3rd studio album. While not all the songs on the record function as straightforward Krautrock this time around, they still manage to capture the spirit and heart of the genre. After relocating from Tokyo to Berlin, Miula’s musical vocabulary has greatly expanded, thus resulting in this ultimate Japanese take on cosmic music in 2022.”

Guitar and bass duo Gong Gong Gong (工工工) charge out from Beijing’s underground scene with a distinct vision and uncompromising sense of purpose. The duo taps into a wavelength uniting musical cultures, drawing on inspirations ranging from Bo Diddley to Cantonese opera, West African desert blues, drone, and the structures of electronic music. Gong Gong Gong’s debut LP, Phantom Rhythm, is their mission statement: between the locomotive chug and banjo twang of Tom Ng’s guitar and Joshua Frank’s thumping bass harmonics, an aura of ghostly snare hits and timpani overtones emerges. Over Frank’s enigmatic melodies, Ng sings in Cantonese, piecing together abstract tales of absurdity and doubt, desire and lust. Formed in 2015, the band’s earliest shows were in Beijing underpass tunnels and DIY spaces. Ng and Frank are both outsiders who call the city their home: Ng, who was born in Hong Kong, defiantly sings in his native tongue, while Frank, originally from Montreal, has lived in Beijing on and off since childhood. (He is the English translator of Ng’s lyrics, adding another layer to the duo’s close collaboration). A compact, almost telepathic unit, Gong Gong Gong use their minimalistic tools and idiosyncratic playing style to challenge the notions of rock n’ roll, stripping the form down to its bare essentials: rhythm, melody, and grit

2022 repress of this deluxe boxset. The first disc is a remastered version of the 1990 Virgin CD reissue of Correlations, recorded and mixed at Panne-Paulsen Studio, Frankfurt, in 1978 by Mick Glossop and originally released by Virgin in 1979. The second disc is the first release of Phantasus, Manuel Göttsching and Udo Arndt's original 1978 recording and mix of the album that was partially re-recorded and totally remixed to become Correlations (Phantasus was Göttsching's intended title, which he changed to Correlations after UK fans told him that the English can't pronounce "phantasus"). The third, fourth, and fifth discs are The Making Of, which includes a 12-page booklet. Performed by Manuel Göttsching (guitar, synthesizer, sequencer), Lutz Ulbrich (guitar, synthesizer, piano, mellotron), and Harald Großkopf (drums, percussion, synthesizer).

ACCIDENT IN HEAVEN was originally released in 1987 as a hand-made micro-edition of about 40 cassette tapes. It was only the third ever release on the short-lived now near legendary SDV label which had been established that same year by Konrad Kraft, Bernd Sevens and Dino Oon in Düsseldorf. Finally finding a more substantial and appreciative audience on vinyl over 30 years after its original limited release, ACCIDENT IN HEAVEN is a strong testament to the explorative experiments of Detlef Funder a.k.a. Konrad Kraft, whose homebuilt studio sound attempted to bridge the clinical roughness of Severed Heads and the psychedelia of Coil with the density and force of industrial, post-punk and prototechno. Concurrent with his ever-expanding production skills, KONRAD KRAFT's sound work in the second half of the 80s stayed firmly rooted within a highly stylised underground spirit. Both his music and also the freshly launched SDV label first and foremost served as a medium for communication. The vital urgency of ACCIDENT IN HEAVEN underlines the record's core narrative which arguably sounds even more futuristic today than it did 30 years ago. Hallmarks of ACCIDENT IN HEAVEN are an 8-track tape recorder, a Yamaha DX7 synth and a Roland 707 drum computer and the late 80s’ internationally ubiquitous shift from analogue to digital music production. Whilst its predecessor ARCTICA (another cassette-only release from 1986/87, previously reissued on TAL in 2018) was significantly more experimental and almost an in-between-states affair, ACCIDENT IN HEAVEN was the point at which Konrad Kraft really began to experiment with beat structures, sequenced synth pads and the framework of 'dance' music. However, the rhythmic elements are submerged so far beneath his expertly crafted drones it's almost impossible to label these sounds as “dancefloor oriented” work at all, as the tracks on the album joyfully disrespect the rules and boundaries of that or indeed any other genre. ACCIDENT IN HEAVEN also epitomizes the decade's ending energy and sharp momentum with its successful merging of highly individual production and irresistible rhythm tracks. The rich wealth of references is mirrored within the silhouettes and the graphics of the album’s unique artwork, which was created by Dino Oon. The new mastering has all sounds on ACCIDENT IN HEAVEN emerge in fresh shades and three dimensional plasticity, inviting the listener not to merely revisit the full palette of KONRAD KRAFT’s creation but offering an entirely new sound experience.