The first Ash Ra Tempel record I bought. Purchased from the legendary Revolver records in Bristol - this is a vinyl reissue on Spalex. So you don't get the lovely fold out sleeve of the original, but the folded out parts are recreated in a CD booklet. I can recall buying this, going down from Revolver to wait for the bus back to Wrington, inspecting the record only to see the message about the booklet on the back. Mine did not have a booklet. So I ran back to Revolver, asked for my booklet, got the booklet, and ran back to the bus station. I don't think I made it so had to endure the 2 hour wait for the next bus, with only the meagre 8 page booklet for company. The booklet has no text beyond that which is on the record.
Anyway - this is the first Ash Ra Tempel LP, them being a trio of Hartmut Enke, Manuel Gotsching and Klaus Schulze. Bass, Guitar and Drums. Two tracks - Amboss at 20 minutes and Traummaschine at 25 minutes. Quite hard to pin down - Amboss is all haze and guitar and heavy drumming. Fairly relentless and non-stop once it gets going and it genuinely sounds like nothing else on earth, like Heavy Metal gone all thinking. About 17 minutes it all breaks down and goes axe crazy before the drums come back in and it goes mental again. All ends on feedback and a crash of the drums.
When I did a student radio show, I named the show "Traummaschine"which is pretty much as close to ambient as Ash Ra got - all bowed strings and cymbals. It's fairly laid back for a 25 minute songs and there's bits of hammered guitar and more haze in there.
Cope describes it as one of the greatest rock n roll records ever made and I'm not sure that's true. It's way way out there and totally unique but not something I find myself returning to that often. Though I'll never get rid of it.
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