STERNENMASKERADE

Felt hot breath and dry magic via their circus stage.

Strange, and addictive show indeed. Their only one 'cassette' album "Wiesbaden" tells us that they might not have played pure 'rock music' but done 'artistic colourful cosmic circus', featuring their quirky, sticky instrumental acrobatic illusion all through the one shot "Sternenmaskerade".

As if we could touch their meditative hospitality and illusive, delusive voyage, their freakout playing fully flooded with mind-altering agent-ish atmosphere sounds somewhat like a drastic measure for us. We can get drenched directly in crazy flute, phantasmagoric guitar, deeply hedonic bass, and dark-space-merged drum sounds ... namely, we should be immersed deeply into cosmic circus 'abuse' without any intention.

So difficult for us to clarify their magical obscurity but no problem. Guess we listeners cannot understand such an addictive atmosphere, unless we attend this cosmic circus show. However, we can grab something abusive instead of feeling their freaky estery breath and extensive fruit-like colour directly. Listen, and put yourself deeply into them.

The band had a silly name, and their only surviving recorded effort is a bootleg-quality dupe, at best. But this ultra-rare collector's item is close to essential listening, and one of the best undiscovered Krautrock freakouts from the early 1970s.

It was originally available only as a mail-order cassette tape, advertised in a single 1972 issue of Sounds Magazine (the German edition). Who knows how few people accepted the offer; what the rest of us missed was an unbroken 45-minutes of thrilling psychedelic guitar rock, resembling a lost Ash Ra Tempel rehearsal recorded live in an empty warehouse.

How such a strong ensemble never found an audience is anyone's guess. Not many power trios have this much voltage to spare, and the guest flautist / sax player (Tim Belbe of XHOL CARAVAN) adds a touch of HAWKWIND Space Ritual to an already far-out piece of music. But calling it a freakout is actually a little misleading. There's a focus and determination here beyond the usual anarchy of Krautrock, with just enough method to keep the madness in check.

Not once do the musicians lose their grip on the material. After a slow, yearning one-chord introduction the pace gradually builds to immense proportions, as if all four players were succumbing to a brain-melting virus that increased the intensity of their performance even as it sapped their will to resist. Cymbals and percussion enter at around the ten-minute mark, and the tempo picks up after another ten minutes, with the addition of a second chord lifting the sound above the stratosphere. From there the track ebbs and flows toward its final, five-minute coda, ending an epic journey on a note of melancholy grace.

All without a dull moment too, at least for aficionados of cosmic guitar workouts. The rough production actually enhances the immediacy of the experience, especially when played loud enough to scramble your synapses. Which of course ought to be the goal of any good Space Rock jam.

Mine is probably a third (or more) generation copy, but at least the music is still available, after a fashion. Rumors on the web say the entire session (a full 80-minutes: this was apparently only the second half!) will be given a long-overdue CD release on the Garden of Delights label sometime this year (2013). When or if that happens (and I'm pleased to report it already has a catalogue number), the album will hopefully earn all the belated praise it never had a chance to enjoy four decades ago.

Three conservative but very enthusiastic stars for the aging analog cassette, with a fourth supernova reserved for the anticipated digital re-issue.

Luckily this Cosmic Circus Music cassette has been brought to daylight from the shadows of obscurity, revealing rustic but very sacral moment of contemplative musical devotion. The long gaze into the atavistic corridors has been conducted with serene piety, not straying to paths of insanity but focusing on yearning of unconscious divinity. This process reminds certainly the hallucinogenic masterpieces of Ash Ra Tempel, The Cosmic Jokers and Yatha Sihdra; I would associate the sound texture of the recording with the two first mentioned, but I felt the third group of comparison describing further the compact characteristics of the jam, along with the spiritual content I felt shining from this forty years old artifact. From contemporary retro groups I think My Brother The Wind have continued carrying forward this heritage of spiritual vintage psychedelic rock astral travelling.

The long opening sequence vibrates freely in rhythmless open space, string instruments searching beautiful harmonies with Tim Belbe's flute, and scarce atonal effect layers strengthen the presence of surreal aura. Bernd Diesner's guitar playing is very focused, deploying acid rock sound's effect portfolio with fine sense of style, and reaching via to moderation the latency of quiet moments' aether. Ulrich Masshöfer introduces his percussion presence after ten minutes of warming up of the melodic instruments, initiating the magic cauldron spout a powerful whirl mystic haze, elevating through the spirals circling around a constant basic key note towards infinity. Karl-Heinz Keffer's firm bass lines keeps this progression solid, and brings extra value to both rhythmic nuances and melodic charms for the epic sonic prayer. The twenty five minutes long groovy twist in krautrock dynamics return later to electrically charged void of slowly moving aural shapes, eventually rising for a final thrust of motioning sequences before disappearing past the horizon. I felt the semi-circular arrangement of this "sea of birth" holding simple but powerful universal characteristics of life and universe we humans observe trough senses, science and religious offsets; The forms of larger complexity arise from the void and chaos, mature to functional entities, and dissolve to the tranquility where they have appeared. Whatever should the position of consideration be, spiritual or logical, I find this configuration peaceful, serene and blessed.

I personally did not associate this psychedelic suite with the word "freak out" so much, but more with seriousness of searching deeper truths from spontaneous unconscious activity. The alluring developments in melodic rhythm-space really bend time, making the forty-five minutes pass in ecstatic rejoicing in spheres of imagination and reality-shadowing themes. Though the recording quality is not optimal, I personally have grown to like raw analogue bootleg sounds from my earlier King Crimson live conquest decade. Certainly from my own yet maturing and limited perspective I consider "Sternenmaskerade" as larger than life statement of spiritual musical expressionism.

When it comes to underground music released so long ago, it's utterly amazing that so much has survived despite existing as the most obscure sounds ever laid down to tape. The term obscure gets tossed around a lot but there are certainly different degrees of obscurity. I would certainly have to bet that Germany's COSMIC CIRCUS MUSIC may perhaps qualify as one of the most obscure of all!

This short-lived project was more of a one-off event really of kindred spirits coming together for a brief moment in time to create some improvisational mind-blowing music influenced by the lysergic sounds of early Ash Ra Tempel and similar acts from Germany's Krautrock scene. Formed in Göttingen, COSMIC CIRCUS MUSIC featured Bernd Diesner (guitar), Karl-Heinz Keffer (bass), Ulrich Masshöfer (drums, synthesizer) and Tim Belbe of Xhol on saxophone and flute.

What makes this the lord god king of obscurities is the fact that CCM only released one artifact of its existence in the form of a cassette-only release titled WIESBADEN (the city where it was recorded). The sole track titled "Sternenmaskerade" was a sprawled out 45 1/2 minute cosmic journey but only filled one side of the cassette. Add to that it was only available privately and had to be ordered directly from the band itself. The ultimate early DIY project, huh?

The only documented media coverage was in the German Sounds Magaine which featured the band as the ultimate stripped down droning space trip. Although the band falls under the catchall Krautrock banner, the music is a light airy type of space rock lacking any bombast and instead featuring the guitar, bass and drums pretty much existing in their own world with a fluttering flute accompanying them on an intergalactic journey beyond the veil.

This space jam could only be ordered by mail order through a 1972 issue of Sounds Magazine with only a handful of individuals actually partaking. This rarity was revived by the archangels of reissues, the brilliant Garden of Delights label which at long last put this lengthy cosmic mind trip on CD in 2013, thus forever catapulting this mysterious psychedelia into the mind of those who worship rescued treasures forevermore.

Despite the Ash Ra Tempel comparisons, that's only a guideline. This is one of those farthest out there trips in the vein of not only Manuel Göttsching and friends but also early Tangerine Dream, Exmagma, Agitation Free and early Deuter. This is an absolute must for Kraut lovers who long for the ultimate escapist's paradise because it doesn't get more detached from the gravitational pull of our Earthly reality than what COSMIC CIRCUS MUSIC crafted on WIESBADEN. This is early 70s AF.