ERHOLUNG

After Achim Reichel recorded his last Krautrock oriented album with members of his A.R. & MACHINES band on "Autovision," he was signaling to the world that he was moving on to more profitable arenas by firstly releasing that work under his own moniker and secondly by ending that album with a snippet of traditional German folk music that would signal his next career move which would be to record and perform more traditional regional folk music that would occupy him until the 21st century revival of interest in all things progressive from the 60s and 70s. Tucked in between the MACHINES era and his less adventurous followup years was this sole LIVE release titled "ERHOLUNG" which means "recuperation" and emerged in 1975 on the Brain Record label. This wasn't really a planned album at all but rather one that was bootlegged by Kurt Mitzkatis who recorded the entire performance on a hand-held battery operated tape machine and then later released officially.

The event took place at the German Rock Festival at the Eisstadion in Krefeld, German on 16 September 1973 after the release of Reichel's entire output as A.R. & MACHINES. Just to give you an idea how popular the Krautrock scene was in Germany at the time, Reichel only appeared in tiny print at the bottom of a poster that displayed the multitude of bands who were playing. This excellent list (wish i could've been there!) includes Birth Control, Triumvirat, Doldinger's Passport, Guru Guru, Wallenstein, Embryo, Ihre Kinder, The Soundedge, Amon Düül II, Udo Lindenberg, Atlantis, Nectar, Karthago, Chris Braun Band, Emergency, Abacus, Randy Pie, Franz K, Eloy, Jack Grunsky and Achim Reichel under his own moniker with help from three of the MACHINES crew. This three guys included only Peter Franken on drums, Olaf Casalich on more percussion and Jochen Petersen alternating between saxophone, flute and maracas. Reichel himself cranked out the guitar with the famous echo effects and other various noises from tape.

The original 1975 LP has ever only found one legit release (as mentioned on the Brain Record label) and it contained four tracks that lasted almost 38 minutes in length, however the actual playing time was nearly twice that length with the other two tracks being lost to the history books until the recent 2017 boxset "The Art Of German Psychedelic 1970-74" which set out to rectify this injustice by releasing every possible work that was remotely A.R. & MACHINES related. In this format, the original is not only remastered to stunning effect but also includes the two extra missing tracks thus presenting the album as originally intended if only success hadn't eluded the band and releasing a double album was a viable choice. This one has pretty much been brushed aside with much of the Kraturock world focusing on the four albums that actually displayed the A.R & MACHINES moniker but this LIVE album is for all intents and purposes a bona fide band effort albeit a truncated version of their earlier days.

Songwise, this one is somewhat unique as the titles of the songs appear on no other Reichel album that came before. All the songs have new titles and the compositions are not really adherent to what came before either but are rather loose jams that include elements from the albums that preceded. ERHOLUNG is very much in the vein of "Echo" and "A.R. IV" which shows the musicians meandering down psychedelic alley with long drawn out jams that find a steady percussive groove as the backbone and the other instruments taking turns fluffing up their freakiest feathers to take off into the clouds. For a hand-held device, it's amazing how good this sounds even before the remastering process. The album sounds like a bona fide studio release actually and except for the audience noises between tracks and the dialogue in German speaking to the audience, this doesn't sound like a crappy live album at all but is quite transcendent in nature and could quite rightfully be considered the bands "sixth" album of sort. The performances are quite relaxed and create a satisfying head-in-the-clouds experience. This one can be quite pricey to track down an original LP but more recommended to obtain as a part of the stunning boxset which doubles its playing time. Even in the original form however, this one is excellent.