SYNTHETIK 1

Some artists like Cluster, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze have become quite popular and synonymous with the progressive electronic music that rode the wave alongside the Krautrock explosion, but also nestled within the explosion of creative electronic music emerging from Germany in the early 70s, others have been left in the vaults of obscurity and discovered only by those jumping into their time capsules and searching high and low for some of the less heard acts. And obscure does not mean for one tiny second that any particular artist wasn't worthy of the same heaping praise, it simply means that for one reason or other they didn't catch the attention of the public at large despite displaying totally unique and creative displays of hitherto unprecedented sonicscapes. Dusseldorf based SEESSELBERG was one of those clever crafty electronic progenitors of wizardry that spent nearly a decade fine-tuning the electronic passions and then released one album only to disappear into a sea of unheard sound. Part of this obscurity surely was the result of only 600 copies released from the first pressing in 1973 but a small but dedicated cult audience has kept this one alive over the decades.

SYNTHETIK 1 is the one and only album to surface from brothers Eckhart and Wolf SEESSELBERG but in its mere three quarters of an hour running time delivers a career's worth of frenetically shifting ambitious sonic ideas that resulted in what i deem a long last classic of the genre. While it may seem that these brothers were riding the wave of contemporaries like Conrad Schnitzler and Cluster, with whom they are for the most part compared, their interest in the sonic potentials of electronic discoveries dates all the way back to 1965 when Eckart was tinkering with his first electronic toys at the time when Wolf was occupied as a stage assistant at the local opera house. Inspired by the fertile nascent electronic sounds gestating from early avant-garde gurus such Raymond Scott, Edgard Varése and Karlheinz Stockhausen amongst many others, Eckhart spent the next several years exploring the emerging field of electronic music in a psychedelic context which all began with his initial interest with simple Walkie-Talkies that developed into fully freaked out symphonies of synthesizers embarking on the most tripped out journeys to planet Lysergia.

The album itself was recorded between 1971 and 1973 and begins as if an electronic simulation of firecrackers had been set off and then quickly goes through wild and raucous episodic outbursts, subdued drifting and various mood changing passages. Unlike many drone oriented contemporaries that milked certain electronic sounds to infinity, SEESSELBERG created a quite busy ever-changing procession of electronic sounds that include much more percussive and rhythmic segments that sound like some sort of proto-industrial grooves that would eventually emerge as the motorik style implemented by more popular German electronic acts such as Kraftwerk and Neu! While the music generates multi-faceted rhythmic clusters of percussion as one of the main features, these segments come and go and are augmented by atonal organ runs, atmospheric surrealism and other avant-garde psychedelic developments. This is free form electronica in full action taking advantage of every technique of the era and utilizing it on steroids.

This is some of the coolest experimental electronic music to blossom from this fertile era of creativity and one of the best finds which takes a completely different approach from the more popular contemporaries. SYNTHETIK 1 is point blank a truly bizarre electronic journey into the unknown where progressive electronic compositional delirium intersects with electroacoustic improvisation and irregularities of sonic waves shooting to the stars and beyond. Supposedly this album has some sort of theme behind the madness but suffice it to say that it works better as a collection of bizarre electronic manipulations that are set to schizoid mode that simmer down to chill and then are coaxed back into full freakery. This one is not to be missed by those who crave some of the most bizarre and texture-rich progressive electronica ever laid down to tape.