KARAWANE DER MYSTIKS

Released a couple of years after the end of the magical and now cult kraut-kosmische rock era, this album from the obscure Blumen Des Exotischen Eises is a super-primitive, druggily psych-rock trip whose concept seems to open mind on liminal-peripherical states closed to transcendance and enlightement. The initial objective could be promising but the result is rather disappointed, mainly due to a very low budget sound production and emphasis on monotonous, static riffs and moods. The album starts with the mystical-eastern influenced Der Engel and its raga acoustic strings and ritual percussions. It carries on the extremely low-fi and destructive Die Kutukomben von goa, based on crashing chaotic percussions, fuzzed out guitars and organ moody vibes. The rest of the album is in the same mood: raw and harsh improvisations built on fuzzing guitars, buzzing drones and instearn-inflected atmospheres. Similar to Amon Düül (first) and Siloah but with much more primal, amateurish musical skills.

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.

What a loose, easygoing, trippy session far from refinement, with so bad recording condition (or their tape itself) ... but trust me, this fuzzy noisy junk room can be fine for us, who do want to get relaxed, altered states of mind.

With old-fashioned, hackneyed noises upon playing a vinyl, lots of percussive instrumental tremors and ethnic flavoured sitar / acoustic guitar sounds gradually invade into our brain as a massive attack ... this "Karawane Der Mystiks" can be said not really delicate nor decent, but such a crooked, deformed sound structure can give us another world trip. With their delightful (oh sounds NOT serious at all!) slightly religious melody creation, especially quake-like deep / noisy percussion, we definitely can get intoxicated, and wonder what they had felt and thought under such a mind-in controllable trip state. Guess they had launched noises and sounds as they wanted to do without any thought or intention actually, but this creation filled with eccentricity and obscurity can throw various imagination upon us ... enough for us.

What is beauty around music? What is comfort? BLUMEN DES EXOTISCHEN EISES have let us know such a difficult issue with this unknown product. And yes, their mysteriously indolent jam session should never be thought meaningless but pretty mind-altering, kosmiche-launching, and let me say, they can let us know a wonder / a power of Krautrock. Not structural nor polished so cannot be approved by fans of melodious Krautrock like Can, Amon Duul II methinks, but would you like to try such an obscure Krautrock mystery?