KARAWANE DER MYSTIKS

I got interested about this album due its obscurity, pretty psychedelic album covers, and some samples which suggested of challenge for understanding. I wanted try to dig out the human presence concealed to these labyrinths of menacing aural constructions.

In my listening process I felt these songs could be divided in to three categories; Acoustic tribal & hippie jams, primitive electronic synth procedure runs and chaotic collective experimentations. Most notable songs for me were the classic sounding rustic tracks, like the opener "Der Engel Vom Westlichen Fenster", having pleasant analogue lo-fi sounds and an acoustic mantra pulsing the memories of distant times via Andalusian manners. Also "Das Rot Der Ampelhure" is an orgastic tribal boogie, optimized for dancing around the campfire on desolate wilderness. "Neulich In Kalkutta" is also a promising mandala-tryout - fellows are slightly choking to their smokes when tuning sitars and other instruments though, but the enthusiastic feeling is delivered as successfully as the smell of the Christmas tree. Also song "Die Ragafabrik" is a chaotic success as an Indian scale study, like suggested by its name. From electronic tracks, "Die Katakomben Von Goa" had strong atonal elements with raw industrial mechanic sounds, creating quite alienated overall feeling. One association could be loading sounds of ancient computers, accompanied with dadaistic lunacy of the dissonant sequences, finally leading to autistic jam with loosely tied primitive melody/rhythm studies.

From most experimental tracks "Karawane Der Mystiks" was a mythical and oppressing tonal space, being quite interesting like "Am Marterpfahl Der Mystiks", a freeform wailing focused ritual. "Durch's Tor Der Vierten Dimension" had some very messy mechanical chaos, when as "Himalaya" was then built from more subtle pickings and voices, creating a pleasant and dreamy soundscapes.

There were some quite poor tracks included, resembling more sillier boogie tryouts without much attempts of liable artistic expression detected. For example some electronic pieces felt quite uncomfortable, like "Die Belohnung Des Schokoladenkonigs...", which was mostly a poor 1980's synth rhythm drill decorated with spontaneous rants. Also some acoustic pieces like "Konfrontation Einer Heiligen Kuh..." was a quite dirty and primitive raga run, and "Subtiler"'s slow sitar & tabla fun-having grew quite annoying to my ears.

However this record brought much thoughts to my mind. Though there are poorer qualities included on it, the fascination could be seen as a merit. Amon Düül's classic "psychedelic underground" has been a clear innovator here, but I enjoyed this record slightly more, as it has more wider spectrum of musical content, however lacking historical similar meaningfulness than the album referred. Some fadeouts suggest these songs are captures from spontaneous jam takeouts, and players were not very skillful, using mostly instruments they have somehow managed to obtain. But what fascinated me was the opportunity of trying to establish connection to these players, and also their music's quality of mingling humoristic aspects with more sacred visions of hippie mystics. I think that most possibly our logical rational world raises from lower spheres of psyche, thus linking humanity to other developed lifeforms, correlating with both new-age philosophies and capilast science's theories. Partially this album managed to elevate feelings of unity with this sphere of dreams, but partially it also felt little uninspired, focusing more to fooling around than searching the source of divine atavism. Interesting record though, but unbalanced and certainly hardcore form its contents. With both longer tracks and more focus, still retaining the imaginative vision of the performers, I believe this record would have grown as a very excellent album.