LORD KRISHNA VON GOLOKA

An original psych/ folk project directed by the esoteric Swiss writer Sergius Golowin. It is in the mood of Rolf Ulrich Kaiser's « Cosmic couriers » series, including many musicians of the krautrock scene for psychedelic improvisations recorded in three epic pieces. Conceptually this album deals with India mysticism, ecstasy and undirectly with drugs experiences, put in music to create a unearthly, beautiful journey through the cosmos and the hidden side of the Humanity. It contains ravishing, odd, spiritual recitations in German taken from Sergius' personal writings. The musical background is essentially under the direction of the folk duo Witthuser & Westrupp who play here all the acoustic parts (flute, bongos, guitars.) in order to provide a timeless and an exotic touch to the album. With lots of psychedelic, electronic, meditative effects combined to spoken words, the atmosphere of this album delivers a very mysterious, refined 'trip' that can easily haunts the listener, brings him into an other galaxy, far from the materialist preoccupations of our common world. This album is uncomparable, the music is unbelievable and can be considered as the most achieved musical document recorded by Rolf Ulrich Kaiser for his delirious "Cosmic Couriers" adventure. A must of "Cosmic music" and a very nice prog folk effort.

I would consider this album to be really the last great Cosmic Couriers album. Lord Krishna von Goloka is another huge viceral mind numbing experience album...an album that plays out with raga like mannerisms and acts like a 40+ minute musical chant. Hypnotic vocals and psychy narration by Sergius Golowin add to the creative wierdness adorning this album. Heavily Eastern influenced themes with tons of acoustic guitar, cosmic flute, piano , mellotron, tabla and bongo and percussion, Glockenspiel (... need more glockenspiel !) Wow.... what a cosmic parade of musicians as well... Klaus Schulze, Walter Westrupp, Bernd Wutthuser, Jurgen Dollas and Jerry Berkers. "Lord Krishna" is really centered around 2 epic tarcks "Der Reigen (17 Mins) and Die Hoch-Zeit (20 Mins) which both play on the cosmic chant mood. The end result is a pretty trippy and pretty insane recording that plays nicely along on those slow moving Sunday mornings.

I'm not surprised at how often the word 'esoteric' turns up when describing the first (and only) album by counterculture author / occult folklorist Sergius Golowin. The LP was fairly unique even within the limitless boundaries of classic Krautrock, and nearly forty years later still carries a lingering echo of the same, psychedelic headrush.

Keep in mind the artist's credit was strictly nominal. The album was actually another pet project of German music maven R.U. Kaiser, the second in a series of Kosmische Musik collaborations after the hot mess of ASH RA TEMPEL's erratic "Seven Up" trip, alongside Timothy Leary. None of the music here was composed in a traditional sense. Instead, the album offers several long, more or less free-form instrumental meditations, improvised by the usual Cosmic Rock superstars (KLAUS SCHULZE; the WITTHÜSER & WESTRUPP duo; Jürgen Dollase and Jerry Berkers of WALLENSTEIN, so forth), with the 43-year old Golowin hired to orate a series of devotional soliloquies over the results.

The album opener "Der Reigen" has an odd, unfocussed charm, and features Golowin intoning what sounds like a Hindu prayer above a drifting nimbus of piano, mellotron and percussive allsorts. The track goes nowhere in particular over sixteen-plus minutes, but the reverberating double-tracked urgency of Golowin's narration (typically bathed in a shimmering studio echo) conjures the perfect mood of Teutonic hippie mysticism.

The much briefer "Die Weisse Alm" (The White Pasture) shows a little more structure, almost resembling a legitimate (and in this case very lovely) melody. Golowin isn't really singing here, but his dreamlike incantation was coaxed into a more natural cadence fitting the gentle Cosmic Folk music of Walter Westrupp's acoustic guitar chords.

And then there's the side-long "Die Hoch Zeit" (rough translation: High Times, and I don't think it's a reference to the Swiss alpine location of the cover photo). The journey begins with an ecstatic cacophony of holy noise, before taking another long, meandering detour into Golowin's radiant consciousness, in a whisper at first but later declaiming his poetic mythos with almost Homeric intensity ("Speak, O Muse, of an age of guitar heroes...")

Here and elsewhere the musicians sound as if they were trying (and often failing) to locate a suitable groove, but never mind. If a little bit of bliss goes a long way, imagine where a nearly 20-minute mantra will take you: to the edge of the known universe, and beyond.

Modern ears might hear the album only as a tarnished artifact from another age (which it is, no doubt). But as the artwork makes abundantly clear it also offers an invaluable (acid) flashback to a rare moment of high musical spiritualism. And until the release of WALTER WEGMÜLLER's epic two-disc "Tarot" set (recorded more or less in tandem with this one) it would briefly mark the purest and (yes!) most esoteric expression of R.U. Kaiser's kosmische utopia...before his fever dreams were derailed by rampant drug abuse and ethical stumbles. But that's another story (see: THE COSMIC JOKERS).