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COSMIC MUSIC EXPERIENCE

Limbus 3 & 4

Krautrock


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Limbus 3 & 4 Cosmic Music Experience  album cover
2.71 | 15 ratings | 3 reviews | 0% 5 stars

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Studio Album, released in 1969

Songs / Tracks Listing

1. Oneway Trip (12:13)
2. Valiha (2:53)
3. Breughel's Hochzeitstanz (2:11)
4. New Atlantis (Islands Near Utopia) (22:08)

Total Time 39:25


Line-up / Musicians

- Odysseus Artnern / various instruments
- Bernd Henninger / various instruments
- Gerd Kraus / various instruments

Various instruments: Piano, Bass, Guitar, Guitar, Cello, Violin, Flute (Transverse, Block, Plastic, Oriental), Totalophon, Valiha, Faray, Tsikadraha, Tambourine, Tabla, Percussion

Releases information

LP Germanafon 941042 (1969)

Thanks to ProgLucky for the addition
and to Neu!mann for the last updates
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LIMBUS 3 & 4 Cosmic Music Experience ratings distribution


2.71
(15 ratings)
Essential: a masterpiece of progressive rock music(0%)
0%
Excellent addition to any prog rock music collection(20%)
20%
Good, but non-essential (47%)
47%
Collectors/fans only (33%)
33%
Poor. Only for completionists (0%)
0%

LIMBUS 3 & 4 Cosmic Music Experience reviews


Showing all collaborators reviews and last reviews preview | Show all reviews/ratings

Collaborators/Experts Reviews

Review by philippe
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
3 stars This band figures among the pioneers of proto-industrial krautrock next to Kluster. Totally weird and damaged this first release includes four long experimental suites made of disturbing, chaotic, claustrophobic and really dark sounds. The musicians use a wide range of effects obtained by different electronic gadgets, distorted electric elements and collage techniques. "Oneway Trip" starts in pure experimentations to reach the top with an amazing psych-jam made in a total disorder, including an insistent repetitive motif led by the bass guitar. On the edition I've got track number 2 (called "im tempo eines") is entirely built around "samples" taken from an orchestral piece in major. A big and funny contrast compared to the previous tune. A lot of derision, invention and a radical taste for "happening", disappointing revisited classics and non common uses of instruments. Primitive and really non-conventional compositions for a nice essay in "dark waters". We can hear a rather closed musical experience in MOOLAH "Woe Ye Demons Possessed".
Review by Eetu Pellonpaa
SPECIAL COLLABORATOR Honorary Collaborator
3 stars When comparing sound of Litmus 3's "Cosmic Music Experience" to other early freak-out kraut albums I have heard, the fine sound quality via proper recording strikes my senses first. Though the album tittle suggests to a coherent meditative pathway in style of Yatha Sidhra's sole masterpiece, this recording captures more confused avantagarde oscillations between acoustic free-jazz tryouts and flute-percussion uneducated duo ragas. The latter elements have their moments, as also the tones of upright bass and classical piano bring rejoicement of this reel allowing psychological analytic probabilities and aesthtetic sensations from the days of Amon Düül's "Psychedelic Underground". The dadaistic but stylistically coherent "spontaneous visit to the recording studio" of Odysseus Artnern, Bernd Henninger and Gerd Kraus exceed to capture both mentioned qualities than the referred Amon Düül record for me, but fails sadly to reach all potential within their reach. For me the curious elements on the sound merged to my vain attempt of searching human motives and personalities from the records similar to this, Blumen Des Exotischen Eises, Egypt is The Magick # etc.; There seems to be some interesting similarities of elements of collective subconsciousness on these atavistic recordings, but I wonder is their shimmer borne from their sonic and compositional characteristics, related tribal scene association's affection, or ability to mirror your own hidden thoughts upon the melody lines of joyless pipe? Possibly anyone could do this stuff also, which could be seen as a personal possibility, but not as a dominant rule for successful artistic expression. Those spontaneous performances reaching the vision of supernatural do not need more than this album has for their conjuration. I believe this record has qlimpses of it, but the lack of focus or abilities seems to slightly blur the wholeness. What seems most interesting is the idea of capturing glimpses of spontaneous psyche of Heidelberg hippies revelling on the soundwaves.
Review by Neu!mann
PROG REVIEWER
2 stars The music of Limbus 3 was hardly proficient enough to qualify as avant-garde (meaning: the forefront of an artistic movement, which these guys certainly were not). Instead, they were content to function as motivated amateurs, with no real creative agenda beyond a noisy disregard for structure and form. At a time when music was learning how to liberate itself from the twin manacles of melody and rhythm, this was truly artless stuff, even when it skirted the ragged edge of an actual riff, usually by accident, and never for long.

But at the same time it's hard not to admire their slapdash, anything-goes attitude. "Oneway Trip" opens the album with a sudden cartoon 'sproinggg!' and a gust of laughter, which sums up the project nicely. Midway into the trip a cool groove actually develops...until it falls apart, of course.

A pair of brief, almost cheerful interludes follows. "Valiha" is named for one of the trio's more arcane instruments: a bamboo zither from Madagascar with a lovely bucolic sound. And "Brueghel's Hochzeitstanz" (Brueghel's Wedding Dance, featuring an obviously tipsy bridegroom) is even more playful: The Residents at pre-school, snacking on milk and graham crackers.

Which leaves the 22-minute "New Atlantis", subtitled "Islands Near Utopia" and likely filling the original album's entire B-Side. The track's length suggests an epic journey, but don't be misled: the fabled Lost Continent might have been an inspiration, but needless to say we're a long way from Eloy's "Ocean" here. On a purely aesthetic level it's little more than a Rorschach inkblot set to music, and the image it presents isn't a pretty one, full of atonal cello scrapes and other organic noises, all of them no doubt fabricated on the spot.

To best approach such hardcore noodling you only need to ask one question: were the performers actually listening to each other, or simply indulging in reckless noisemaking? I'm inclined to suspect more of the latter here, but in 1969 this kind of arbitrary improvisation served a greater purpose. Without such contrary impulses, would the full spectrum of Progressive Rock ever have evolved?

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