Siddhartha - 1974 - Weltschmerz

Very little is known about this album or the band. It was first pressed into 400 copies with private distribution, never to be publicly known until Penner Records (1994) and Garden of Delights (1998) were so nice as to remaster and redistribute it in CD format. There have been no other known releases by them and sadly none of the members seem to have had any significant involvement with other bands (the one exception being Klaus Scharff who seems to have somehow been involved with highly acclaimed prog group Pancake). It also had a more recent vinyl repressing on the label Amber Soundroom (2004). Here is the rundown:

1. Looking in the Past
2. Tanz Im Schnee
3. Times of Delight
4. Weit Weg
5. Gift of a Fool   

It appears we have a total of 5 members: Eberhard Müller on guitar, Gerhard Kraus doing violin and vocals, Klaus Hermann on drums, Klaus Scharff on bass, and Martin Mörike on keyboard with additional vocals. Additional playing includes Iris Rothermel on flute and Lothar Mattlinger on tuba. According to their Discogs profile, they were college students who got together to make music in their free time. The word 'Siddhartha' comes from the birth name of the founder of Buddhism, widely popularized in the 60s by a novel of the same name by Hermann Hesse. The word is a conjunction of two sanskrit words which together mean "one who has found meaning of existence." Weltschmerz is a term coined by the German author Jean Paul denoting the feeling that one's mind is never adequately satisfied by the physical reality (Wikipedia). A fitting term for the overall mood of this album.

How best to describe Weltschmerz? It is progressive, riddled with many sections. Its rhythm and melody are dense, reminiscent of carousel music (first two tracks especially). I would like to mention how much I love the female vocalist in the opening track, who immediately commands attention by launching into the beginning with the phrase "Turn your head and you will see." This record is just chock full of surprises. Track 2, 'Tanz im Schnee' has this almost surf rock quality to it. There are other oddities that include field recordings of footsteps reverberating off of the walls like in a tunnel in one brief section.

Track 3 offers some relief from the sheer density of track two with some beautiful interplay between the two guitars and the bass. A simply wondrous melodic communication that I've only come to know and love within the 70s krautrock scene. Interestingly, this track contains male vocals. There is also a fiddle being played in this track where there wasn't before. The track ends with a cacophenous cataclysm of all the instruments with only the synth being left with a single sustained note.

Track 4, the epic 12 minute track starts with guitar picking accompanied by the fiddle, with the rhythm changing about a minute in with the drums coming in, which once again changes with all the instruments dropping out except for the guitar picking with a phaser added but with a flute now added. And slowly the fiddle comes back in to harmonize with them. But I digress....

Of the late 60s and early 70s German psych/prog rock scene, this LP has always stuck out in my mind, and helped to solidify my undying passion for the genre. Its obscurity opened my eyes to the notion of there being so many forgotten gems buried amidst the ravages of time, never to see the light of day until recently. A testament to the fact that lack of advertising and distribution in no way dictates the quality of musical ideas. A good composition may come from the most humble collective of college students, who simply take joy in the act of performing and creating new music together. It is good to know we have labels like Garden of Delights that continue to unearth more of these unknown masterpieces. 10/10

Satin Whale - 1973 - Desert Places

Hello! Welcome to my first krautrock album review! I hope to make many more in the future. To start, I'm going to pick this debut album by Satin Whale I was lucky enough to stumble across recently. I had been hesitant as to how I would jump into this review, as I prefer to give readers the most informed critique possible. But alas that is not going to be the case with many of these great gems without initiating a direct interview from the people involved (something I wish to do in the future), but I will provide whatever information I can find.

According to their Discogs page, Satin Whale are from "Cologne/Köln", Germany. However, their German Wikipedia entry says their origin is North Rhine-Westphalia. So take from that what you will. According to their Wikipedia entry, they started as a trio in 1971 consisting of Thomas Brück (bass/vocals), Horst Schättgen (drums/vocals), and Gerald Dellmann (keyboards). By the release of their debut 'Desert Palaces', they had expanded into a quartet with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Dieter Roesberg (guitar/flute/alto-sax/vocals), distributed by the one-and-only Brain record label. Now, about the actual album....

The first thing that struck me about this release was the intricacy of the arrangements, packed with such beautiful melodies, almost reminiscent of the 60s garage/psych sound. Track one, also the title track will hit you with Roesberg's gliding Jethro Tull-esque flute, elevated with the colorful sustained notes of Dellmann's psychedelic keyboard. These stop abruptly at about the 1:20 minute mark into a another section that explodes into a multi-colored rainbow of guitar, bass, drums and synth. Less than halfway through this almost 7 minute title track you got some incredibly lush blues guitar soloing, followed by our first vocals. Unfortunately there is no documentation on these lyrics that I can find on the internet but luckily they are audible enough. We get more heartfelt melodies, each element making its own unique contribution. Somewhere in this vocal section I think I hear that the keyboard player has switched to vibraphone. The overall impressions I get just from this first track are vibrant melodies awash in the dreaminess of phasers and colorful blues chords. The drums chug along to all of this, keeping precise time to all these different sections. I can already tell this band has truly got some special kind of synergy going on.

The momentum from that first track only picks up with track 2 'Seasons of Life.' I cannot make out all the lyrics but the ones I can are simply beautiful motifs about sunshine and the changing of seasons. From here I will spare you all a concise breakdown of every song and instead provide with some overall observations.

One thing I really love about the krautrock scene was the free spirit of the drums. These are a refutation of the conventional "good solid backing" that so many Rock band setups seem to prefer. The drummer in this band manages to let his heart soar with dense, ever changing rhythms while at the same time not intruding on the other instruments. I should also mention that this album is VERY well mixed, which I think has a lot to do with that. Schättgen provides for a powerful driving rhythm that accents the end of each section with a PUNCH. Not an easy task considering the sheer complexity of these song structures.

A word about the vocals. I don't often prefer that vocalists crossover into languages outside their native tongue, as it often comes out sounding a bit stiff or awkward. However, I take exception to these vocals (Roesberg's?), as they have both great English lyrics and better than average annunciation. The singing still comes off as a bit stiff in its expressiveness but not enough to really bother me all that much.

Overall, Satin Whale's debut is an incredibly dense and soulful album based heavily on colorful blues melodies, chock full of guitar solos backed by the sustained notes of the keyboard. I think their sound manages to achieve this while at the same time retaining a degree of accessibility, their Garage rock influences remaining prominent throughout. I can imagine this kind of style proving to be too overwhelming for some who prefer a more refined, simplistic style of song writing in their psychedelic rock. If that is the case, I would not recommend this album. But for those who crave a positive psychedelic journey into the intricacies of rainbow kaleidoscopic prog-blues melodies, this is the album for you. 9/10