A bite out of life ...
Hey Matt , hope you didn't pay so much for Dinger's Angels' ,
i'd seen some writeup that made it sound promising , thankfully i didn't bite / seek it out .
Some comments /observations so far
Peter Baumann : He was in the right place , right time with T Dream.
By the time i was able to meet up with him in 1984 , he was at a crossroads , living in NYC and he had up in his studio on E 23rd St. one of those custom mixing board that also had ossillators like a synth that Kraftwerk did so well with.
The board got my attention right off , more then the "Russians Are Coming" vinyl he pressed on me in an early meeting .
Anyway, we did get to work on the board and that went well
(basic tracks for '84's "The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight" )
but the publishing deal Peter and his friend tried to get me to do didn't work out,
we went our own ways with Peter getting married ,moved to Conn. (?) and
starting Private Music , one of the early New Age label here in US.
Agitation Free : I keep reading good things about their records , now have rd more on this thread -
will have to finally check them .
I only came across M Hoenig (sorry if my spelling is shot , just drinking that first coffee now) around the same time in W Berlin ('83) when he got involved in sessions i was having with Malaria ' synth player Sushanna Kuhnke . Hoenig's horning in brought that project to a halt , unfortunately .
But he's done well in LA scoring those movies .
"Teutonik Disaster" Comp.'s on Gomma : Not sure these groups connect to 'Krautrock' per see ,
not cking sleeve notes this moment , but i don't think Conny P had a hand in any of them though.
There is some good stuff on there ...
Had never heard of Exkurs (they are on both vol.'s) but was glad to find them there ,
they reminded me of some characteristics of DAF .
Hats off to the Gomma boys for the hard work putting those together .
Tangerine Dream : Not familiar with all of their music ,
M Diekmann made me a Comp. of music from Phaedra ('74), Rubycon ('75) , Stratosfear ('76) that gets play from time to time , and almost every time it passes quickly and i enjoy it playing in the space ,
but the pieces do blur on me.
Whatever the taste, they remain and deserve to be influential for doing electronic music that early on .
It surely wasn't easy
DAF: No doubting the great records DAF did ,
and with Conny Plank producing the results is/was just awesome .
From "Kababtraume" to "Fur Immer" they made their own canon ,
retro & revivalists don't even try and struggle put to top the stripped down synth & drums attack of DAF in their prime. You can play alot of those tracks and they still sound great.
Chrislo and Beate's Liaisons Dangeruses slot right alongside DAF , but they shot off and quickly established their own sound. On cuts like "Kess Kill Fe Show" Conny P's harmonizer turns vocals into animal howl burbling against Chrislo's Oberheim dark end of the street German gothy synth constructions .
Out of the canon , i mention an odd record I did buy on impulse , based only on the writeup
(maybe same place Matt rd about der Angels) and that was The Nazgul Album ,
originally on Moat/Pyramid and rere'd on Psi Fi .
Recorded at Dieter Dierks by a crew of anonymous players , totally "Lord Of The Rings" influenced ,
sparse , open soundtrack -y Tibetan horns , ethnic perc. music .
Interesting in the ' they made this when ?' kind of way, but nonessential in terms of actually buying it (!)
What was Bowie singing in Station to Station , 'The European Cannon is here ...' ?
He certainly took the canon to heart/mind/his records , back in that day .
Another German group , in between trends and without canon was Belfegore ...
anyone catch them ? some pretty good songs on that Album, as i recall Conny P produced.
And as noted previously , the early Der Plan, Pyrolator releases were essential in their time .
We loved those records , so fresh for then !