HW: My Top 10 Space albums

[Doug Pearson]

On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 16:43:54 -0500, Stephan Forstner
<stemfors at PIPELINE.COM> wrote:

>On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 19:06:37 -0500, Tim <ma-paharper at IOPENER.NET> wrote:
>>...Would like to know where you find Marble Sheep cds, all i've ever
>> found was _Stone Marby_(love the track  "inside out")
>
>All the early (i.e. their best IMHO) stuff is out of print (Old From New
>Heads, Whirl Live, Shinjuku Loft, s/t) so probably it will have to be
>eBay.

I agree about this stuff being the best Marble Sheep.  And if you're a fan
of Radio Gnome-era Gong, you'll want to check out the first (s/t, on
Alchemy) Marble Sheep album just for the pothead pixie-inspired graphics.

>Note that the early stuff doesn't sound like Stone Marby, it has more of a
>Hawkwind meets Amon Duul I vibe and is a bit rougher around the edges - a
>psychedelic garage band doing jamming versions of the Stone Marby songs
>and stretching them out to twice their length might give an idea!
>
>On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 19:02:49 -0500, Nick Medford <nickmedford at HOTMAIL.COM>
>wrote:
>>the first Ash Ra Tempel album (probably because I saw it going cheap
>>somewhere, thus are a few great purchases and some not-so-great ones
>>made) and it is as you say an absolute classic, a thousand times better
>>than the concert I'd seen. The only other one I have is "Join Inn",
>>which- naff title aside- is of a similar standard (similar format too-
>>two side-long pieces, first side freaked-out jamming enlivened by
>>Schulze's incredible drumming, second side much more meditative, almost
>>devotional).
>
>I rank the debut and 'Join Inn' as 1 and 2, so you've got what I would
>consider their must-haves. 'Schwingungen' and '7-up' are the other 2 early
>albums, which actually came out betweeen the 1st and JI, and Schulze was
>not on either of those - I think they're also pretty good, though not at
>the same level, and with more of a weirdness factor to them due to some
>odd vocals (Timothy Leary on 7-up for example) and stylistic shifts.
>After Join Inn they did 'Starring Rosi' which is more hippy-folky, with
>prominent female vocals (from Rosi, thus the title) - not bad but no
>longer really spacerock.

I would agree that the first four Ash Ra Tempel albums (the ones with
Harmut Enke on bass) are the ones to get.  Also essential for fans of
those albums would be the Cosmic Jokers albums, especially s/t, 'Galactic
Supermarket', and 'Planeten Sit-In' (the other two are bizarre Rolf Ulrich-
Kaiser-narrated medleys/studio-edits/compilations of a bunch of Jokers &
related stuff), which carry the loose, jamming, aspects of Ash Ra to their
logical extreme.  Also highly-recommended is the Walter Wegmüller double-
album, 'Tarot', which features Gottsching, Enke, and Schulze (on synths),
along with several other krautrock "all-stars" playing material that's
more song-oriented (but is still completely freaked-out), ranging from
Funkadelic-like vamps to spacey interludes to melodic chamber-pop
(however, I don't recommend paying for a copy, since its only availability
is/was an overblown box set).

>>Moving on to Acid Mothers, I've generally found them an amazing live
>>band, but they unfortunately seem to have got into the habit of
>>releasing far toom much (any old noisy jam session will do it seems)
>>regardless of quality-

I think that other Japanese psych bands like Ghost, Overhang Party, and
Kousokuya have much better quality control (and, consequently,
smaller/easier-to-handle discographies).  I prefer all three of those (all
though Kousokuya can range towards being more "difficult" than the former
two) to AMT.

>>Another question- Amon Duul's "Psychedelic Underground"- where does this
>>fit into the Amon Duul I/II saga- is this the one that was recorded right
>>at the start before the split? How does it sound compared to
>>Paradieswarts Duul, say?
>
>This was the very first official Amon Duul (I) release, from before the
>split as you say. Muddy sound, repetitive tribal strumming, drumming, and
>humming (OK, no humming, chanting actually - but some of the muddy sound
>could be due to mains hum I guess), and odd tape effects - it sounds like
>someone used a beat-up old tape recorder at a hippy commune doing a sing-
>along jam session, then accidentally taped over bits of it, which is what
>it basically was! By comparison Paradieswarts Duul sounds like a
>professionally produced mainstream folk-psych album - and its far from
>being that, as you know, so that should give you an idea of how far
>underground Psychedelic Underground really is. (I like Paradieswarts a lot
>too, but its a very different animal).

All four Amon Duül (I) albums aside from Paradieswarts (the fifth) sound
like they're taken from the same jam session, as well-described by Stephan
above :^).  If you like 'Psychedelic Underground', you might want to
get 'Disaster', 'Collapsing', and/or 'Experimente', but if you don't like
it (or if it's enough of what it is), don't bother with them.

    -Doug
     jasret at mindspring.com