TRIPS UND TRAUME

This is without a doubt one of my favourite folk albums ever made! Deeply engulfed in the wobbly psychedelics of their home turf, Bernd Witthuser and Walter Westrupp offer up a slight twist to the rambunctious rock of their peers, and give to you something deliciously airy and sensitive. Trips Und Träume is chuck full of docile psychedelic auras that twinkle away under acoustic guitar strummings and a way with melodies that rivals even the good Sir Cliff Richard.

Laßt uns auf die Reise gehn starts off things with a jolly mood that evokes tall grasses and long lost summer days, where the air was so humid and lazy that all lederhosen affairs had been cancelled. The guitars sound warm and heartfelt, and if I didn't know any better I'd say they were the result of two 12 string entities making love beneath a shadowy bridge.

Then Tripo Nova comes in and we're instantly reminded of the great big Krautrock flares. With simple instrumentation the duo manages to erect a larger than life sonic structure that ever so gently washes over you with the force of a small mountain.

Just between these two tracks you get a sense of a singer-song writers wet dream caught in the up- draft of Krautrock's more direct persuasive methods. The music is infinitely easy going and gentle, yet somehow the end result sparkles it's way through your living room like a continuous stream of floating shimmering diamonds.

The rest of the album continues this path, and while most of the people picking up this baby naturally have an affinity for the wilder side of the German scene, the bits and pieces of smouldering laissez faire instrumentation are still more than likely enough to nurse a fleeting semi-boner in your trouser department. Personally I'd call this Krautfolk. The inclusion of mandolin, trumpet, zither, flute and some aptly placed bongos lift the album up from the mundane oceans of everyday 70s folk rock. Hell, this isn't even rock. There are no drums, no stomping sections or wild spiralling guitar solos, but what you get in turn, is a natural sounding concoction of breezy psychedelic music that evolves around the German singing that both feels rural and masculine while at the same time coming off rather enigmatic in a Bob Dylanesque kind of manner.

This album is filled to the brim with head turning moments, but with everything else on this release, they are conveyed in a subtle way. There's a gentleness about these pieces. A soft genuine persona engrained in it's very being. The acoustic guitars are surely testimony to this, and you'll often hear them duetting with each other during the longer rhythm sections, where the music suddenly lifts off in a calculated attempt to reach the very confines of our planetary borders. These are my favourite parts of this album. Put on Illusion 1 or the following Karlchen and catch this fragile beauty in it's purest form.

I heard this album while on an air plain to Rhodes. I zoomed out every obnoxious kid, every amphetamine fuelled stewardess and took off before the plain had reached it's runway. The bright sunlight peeping in from the tiny windows created a mosaic of white patterns inside of our flying box, and I felt an enormous symbiosis happening between the music and the bizarre alternating surroundings. I was leaving on a jet plain, didn't know when I'd be back again. Oh babe I love to go.

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