TONE FLOAT

"Tone Float" is the debut and sole full-length studio album by German krautrock/experimental rock act Organisation. The album was released through RCA Victor in 1969. "Tone Float" was produced by prolific German producer and musician Konrad "Conny" Plank. The album saw an UK only release in August 1969 but due to poor sales the band was dropped by RCA Victor and disbanded soon after. Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider-Esleben then went on to form Kraftwerk. Kraftwerk are widely known as pioneers of electronic music but this album by Organisation is very different from Kraftwerk´s trademark style.

The music on "Tone Float" is basically sound experiments and actually bears little resemblence to what I would charachterize as regular tracks (or music for that matter). Just a lot of ambient and repetitive sounds (created by organ, bass, flute, violin, triangle, bells, marimba) with various percussion underneath. To my ears the compositions sound directionless and very repetitive and monotone. It´s actually rather noisy and unpleasant on the ears. Only very seldom is there anything memorable that you can hold on to. The side-long 20:46 minutes long title track will probably be quite a trial to get through if you´re not a fan of music that almost solely consists of experimental sounds but the four shorter tracks that make up Side 2 of the original LP are more or less more of the same. The fact that they are shorter, just makes the trial a bit less punishing.

While I generally praise experiments and weird innovative approaches to writing music some releases just cross the line and become too inaccessible and weird for the sake of it. Such is the case with "Tone Float" which to my ears is art for art´s sake. The album is of course historically significant as it portrays some early experiments with free structures, noise, drone and other stylistic elements within rock music, but as a listening piece, it´s very much an aquired taste. a 1.5 star (25%) rating is warranted.