Saw Delight

Release Year: 1977

Label: Virgin, Harvest

Saw Delight marks the first major lineup change on a Can studio album since Damo Suzuki’s departure in late 1973, with the addition of bassist Rosko Gee and percussionist Rebop Kwaku Baah, both formerly of the band Traffic. Compared to previous Can releases, the album sets itself apart courtesy of its eclectic set of influences (e.g. highlife, funk, etc.), with some inspiration coming from guitarist Michael Karoli’s experiences travelling in eastern/central Africa before its recording. The music here presents a brighter and at times outright playful side of Can that, while not as overtly experimental as previous releases, demonstrates that the band remained creative and looking to work with new musical ideas.

By far the highlight is the 15-minute “Animal Waves”, whose hypnotic rhythm is further enhanced by the use of Holger Czukay’s shortwave sampling experiments and the texture provided by Baah’s percussion to generate an incredibly captivating atmosphere. 

While Baah and Gee remained in Can's lineup on their two subsequent records (Out Of Reach and Can/Inner Space), Saw Delight would be their last studio album until 1989's Rite Time to feature Czukay as a full band member.

If you've heard this album and/or want to share more commentary about it, feel free to discuss further in the comments section. As with all of these weekly discussion posts, we encourage you to give it a listen if you're unfamiliar with it!

The

It's been a little while since I've posted one of these music-related write-ups, so in recognition of Missus Beastly's feature on r/Krautrock this week, I thought I'd share a summary I wrote about the band's complicated background. Somehow this is the third post in this format that I've made that discusses "outfakes", or the phenomenon of deliberately mislabelled recordings in music bootlegging. If you'd like to read a similar post I wrote about a recording misattributed to Tangerine Dream, you can read so here (see the comments for a follow-up). Otherwise, I hope you find this one interesting!

Also, if anything is inaccurate, feel free to let me know.

Missus Beastly and CPM

Although many blossoming krautrock groups had their origins in the 60s underground, at that time, label interest in many of these artists was relatively minimal (as record markets in Germany were still heavily centred on foreign artists) and dedicated labels for German underground music for the most part did not yet exist. Most krautrock releases c. 1969-1970 were released on more general or international labels (e.g. United Artists) or by small private companies.

CPM (subtitled “The Progressive Artist's Cooperative Record Production”) was an independent label affiliated with the eponymous CPM-Studio (run by Gunter Tannhäuser) based in Erlangen, Bavaria, where all of its releases were recorded. The label was established in 1969 and was very short-lived, having only released three albums during its lifetime and seemingly shuttering c. 1970. However, the studio remained active for a little while longer until at least December 1971, as that was where the sole, eponymous album by the band Da Capo was recorded. 

The second LP issued by CPM was the debut Missus Beastly album. According to an interview with former Missus Beastly guitarist Atzen "Art Zen" Wehmeyer, approximately 1000 copies were pressed, but due to poor storage conditions in the studio’s attic (where many copies were kept), many became severely warped from heat exposure. In recent decades, it and the other CPM records have become immensely sought-after by collectors, although it has been officially reissued multiple times, most recently by Garden of Delights.

Piracy

At some point after the original record’s release, a man from Amberg identifying himself as Henry C. Fromm came into the picture. “Fromm” claimed to be the band’s manager and a participant on the band's first album, and was approaching labels for the prospect of releasing Missus Beastly’s music. He was purportedly not known or identified by anyone in the band, but he was never their manager (with that honour belonging to Günter Scheding) and in all likelihood had no direct affiliation with them at all. “Fromm” is likely an alias, and his real name is unknown.

His efforts led to their debut album being unofficially reissued later that year, with an altered cover and credits and renamed “Nara Asst Incense”, For a bootleg release, Nara Asst Incense has the pretty unique quality of having been released by a legitimate record company (OPP World Wide), who likely had no idea that "Fromm" was tricking them. According to Rudi Vogel’s Krautrock Muzikzirkus, this edition would have retailed at department stores for a budget price (purportedly for 5 DM or roughly €10-11 today, although even for the time that seems unusually cheap).

The 2002 Garden of Delights CD reissue describes the OPP release as having been “recorded directly from vinyl”, which would imply that it was produced from a dubbed tape copy. However, I’m not sure if that’s the case, as the two releases share identical runout numbers (LPS 002 A and LPS 002 B). These still reference the album’s original CPM catalogue number, and their appearance on the pirated edition indicates that both originate from the same stampers. If this is true, that suggests that “Fromm” may have been affiliated with (or would have otherwise had access the materials from) a pressing plant or some other sort of manufacturing facility. 

At the time that the OPP release was on the market, Missus Beastly (despite having undergone substantial lineup changes) were still active, but they soon ran into financial issues. Having resorted to selling off most of their equipment (including their van), their ability to play live was considerably limited, and they disbanded in late 1971. They remained inactive for a number of years before reforming in Autumn 1973, with only Lutz Oldemeier remaining from the band’s original lineup.

The Fake Missus Beastly

After marketing the pirated Nara Asst Incense LP proved to be somewhat lucrative, “Fromm” continued to present himself as the band's manager in hopes of securing a similar record deal. However, the real band’s inactivity presented some complications, given that no other recordings of them were in circulation at this point. Instead, he opted to impersonate them by issuing recordings by other bands under their name.

Three additional albums and three singles under the Missus Beastly name were ultimately issued between 1972 and 1974. Although “Fromm” did manage to gain the interest of the (now-deceased) publisher Hans Wewerka for the release of a single on the small Munich-based label Orange, most of the other fake Missus Beastly records from this time period were self-released. All of his releases were on the “Vanilla Fudge” and/or “Electric Bird” imprints and feature a very distinct, amateurish graphic design style for the sleeve artwork.

Given that these bands were all credited a false name, their actual identities are a bit obscure. However (kudos to "Crack in the Cosmic Egg" author Alan Freeman for this), the presence of writing credits from “H. Erbell” and “P. Schemm” on a majority of these “Missus Beastly” releases points to one of the band’s identities as being the hard rock group RS Rindfleisch, who were active from 1969 to 1972. Drummer Herman Erbel (aka Herman Rarebell) is likely familiar to you as the drummer of Scorpions from 1977 to 1996, with him having played on many of their most iconic albums (e.g. Blackout, Love At First Sting, etc.).

RS Rindfleisch themselves only released one single while they were still active, and the extent of their relationship with “Fromm” (if one ever existed) is unknown. However, given that they were no longer active when the majority of the fake “Missus Beastly” releases were issued and the lack of any proper attribution to them beyond individual musicians being credited, I suspect that these releases were unauthorised. Either way, they were unambiguously not related to the Missus Beastly and never actually played under their name.

RS Rindfleisch were not the only band featured on these releases, but the identity of the other(s) is much more difficult to determine. Two of the LPs bear references to other artists (“Weramean” and “Bali”) alongside Missus Beastly, and not all of the recordings (e.g. the organ and flute/sax-dominated “Weramean” tracks) fit the hard rock style of those linked to RS Rindfleisch. Aside from members associated with RS Rindfleisch, the only other musician credited on many of these recordings is the organist “Heidy Wachter”, who is otherwise undocumented. However, given “Fromm’s” habit of altering the credits of the albums he released, even the information included on them is a bit dubious, and it’s likely that these artist names are similarly fictitious given that they are not listed or referenced anywhere else.

It’s also not clear as to where “Fromm” obtained these recordings, given that they don’t seem to have been released in any other form. The actual fidelity of these varies; most are clearly rough live bootlegs (complete with audible feedback at some points - yeesh!) whereas the “Fuck You Free” b/w Fire Bird” single could pass for studio outtakes or demos of some sort. There is a lot of dubbed-on audience noise on the LPs (seemingly to give the impression of a continuous recording), which is most obvious where it’s tacked onto a studio recording of the real Missus Beastly on the “Volkmusic” LP.

Freeman speculates that these recordings may have been taped at a music festival that “Fromm” was present at or helped organise, although it’s not known when it would’ve taken place or what bands would have attended.

Bizarrely, “Fromm” issued at least one unrelated single (“What Does She Use To Be” b/w “Rock Baby Roll” by Wolfgang Noack). That single actually made an appearance on the then-popular SWF television program “Pop” on 3 November 1974, where it was openly mocked by presenter Hans-Jürgen Kliebenstein. In that clip, Kliebenstein reads a letter (likely from “Fromm” himself) sent to SWF for promotional purposes, which indicates that part of his business strategy was sending his records to media companies and marketing them with false claims of being heavily pre-ordered. This single is the last known release from any of “Fromm”’s label imprints.

Seeing as they were not widely released at the time (nor were they ever reissued in any form owing to their questionable legal status), the fake Missus Beastly records have become extremely rare collectors’ items. Even digitised rips of the LPs are a bit tricky to find, but I thankfully was able to track down files with audio from the “Super Rock In Germany” and “Volkmusic” LPs.

Despite the pretty low (albeit by no means unlistenable) audio fidelity of those LPs, the music there isn’t actually too bad, albeit not really exceptional. What’s here is very jam-oriented hard rock and psychedelic blues-rock that is played quite competently. There are even some pretty decent riffs on the more guitar-dominant tracks (which I suspect would’ve been from Rindfleisch, although I’d need to hear that 7” single of theirs for reference).

I think it’s pretty valuable documentation to have these recordings of underground bands whose recorded discography is otherwise minimal or non-existent, even if they came into existence for very dubious purposes. Certainly not “hundreds if not thousands in your local currency” valuable, but I am at the very least grateful these performances were preserved in some form.

It’s just a shame that the real identities of some of these performers are so obscure, and I doubt the musicians behind “Weramean” or “Bali” will be unmasked anytime soon. As to who “Henry C. Fromm” really was or what happened to him, who knows! He could be geriatric and still trying to con people to this very day.

I was listening to Göttsching and Ulbrich's excellent OST for the 1976 film Le Berceau De Cristal earlier and thought I'd share some photos that date from around the same time period. Ulbrich is probably better known among krautrock enthusiasts for his work with Agitation Free, but he and Göttsching had known each other since they were teenagers and had collaborated numerous times over the years (such as with Ashra in the late '70s and '80s).

The first image (selected on account of its higher resolution) comes from Berndt Kistenmacher's online tribute to the then recently-departed Göttsching, and the second is sourced from Göttsching's website, dated 1976. (If you own the Le Berceau De Cristal CD - either the Spalax or MG ART editions - you can also find another photograph from this same session printed in the booklet).

Ulbrich also shared his own tribute via Radio Ens to honour him. I'll leave some quotes from Michael Freerix's translation here; it's very touching.

>Back in Berlin, we rehearsed together for the first time and it clicked. Through my contact with Assaad Debs, our manager of Agitation Free, we had our first concert in Paris. A wonderful prelude to many years of music together. The two of us played tracks from his brilliant LP [Inventions for Electric Guitar] in France and England and became friends for life. I still remember how we rode in our VW bus with open windows through the warm summer night on the way to Arles in 1975, where we were to play together with Can, Nico and Kevin Ayers in the amphitheater.

>We both had shoulder length hair blowing in the breeze. I looked over at Manu and said, "I used to be Old Shatterhand!" Manu: "Me Winnetou!" We had a fit of laughter. As it must be said in general, you could have a lot of fun with Manuel. He had the great gift of being able to laugh at himself. And in general he was a relaxed person and we had a very good vibration together. It was a great pleasure to play this hypnotic music with him, and I remember that time very fondly.

Serious question. 

I've tried a handful of times to find SOMETHING enjoyable, even tolerable from them. Nothing seems to click. Their music is almost entirely off-putting for all the wrong reasons. I say "almost" because I'll be damned if I give any of their 15+ albums a serious listen after the drivel I already heard. 

Their work is the kind of music "auteurs" who jerk off Eric Clapton and Nick Drake seem to enjoy. The pretentious nature of those sorts is beyond saving. If I have to smoke a blunt and have some snooty Brian Griffin type put on "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" one more time, I automatically block their number from my phone and ghost them. Being a living "Fart in a crowded elevator" type is exhausting to be with. At least Clapton and Drake are pleasant to the ear. Roger Waters is basically that 12 year old screeching racist slurs over Xbox Live just to draw a reaction. Provocation =/= necessary.

What am I missing? Am I not drinking enough of the Kool-Aid? I enjoy good social commentary, but when it's all over the place like it is in their songs, it's hard to get behind the artist thematically. Is audio cringe their entire gameplan, or is there a bigger purpose to Pink Floyd?

I don’t often agree with Christgau but this is very funny to me.

While Electronic Meditation is this week's featured album, I thought I'd share some more photos of the lineup that recorded it. There are more images of the trio online than what I've included here.

The first image is from the official Tangerine Dream website, while I got the second from an upload on Pinterest of all places! That website is a pain to navigate when not logged in, but there are a surprising amount of cool band/artist photos on there.

The TD website is a useful resource and the page I linked includes a pretty decent summary of the band's "Pink Years" while signed to Ohr, the first real record contract they had.

>In late 1969, Edgar met the drummer Klaus Schulze, who just had left his band Psy Free. They found a musical partner in Conrad Schnitzler, a former student of Joseph Beuys. Conrad was likewise on a rather unorthodox journey into fine art, and he created sounds with all sorts of tools.

>Klaus recalls a rather strange concert experience from the same year. "One day we played with Tangerine Dream at a festival in some castle or other. It lasted the entire weekend, and we visited Guru Guru who lived somewhere near there. Well, these guys dropped some LSD into our tea, right before the gig! Geez... That was a gig! Conny Schnitzler had a violin with a pickup which he just held in front of the speaker, and it just screamed the whole time. Edgar told us later that he thought the guitar neck was 10 meters long and he couldn’t reach it. And me with my drums; I hit them hard but the sound seemed to take an age to come back to me, sort of like half a minute later. Just for a brief moment, in one of those brighter moments you have on such trips, I saw a guy in the front row, he was 10 meters away from me for sure but I thought he was standing right in front of me, and he just said: “Man, these guys are kaputt."

>Later that year, the new line-up recorded a session in a private studio in Berlin-Kreuzberg. The material was not originally intended for release. For some unknown reason, the session tape found its way onto the desk of producer and Hansa Studios owner Peter Meisel. To the band's surprise, Ohr Records, founded by Meisel and Ralf^(sic)-Ulrich Kaiser, offered them a recording contract. 

Photo courtesy of Klaus D. Müller from the official Klaus Schulze website. The site lists it as being taken in 1970, but I'm not sure if this is correct, as Dieter’s involvement predates Conrad Schnitzler joining the band in 1969. 

The man in glasses pictured in the centre is only identified as “the landlord”, but otherwise everyone in the picture is from left to right as titled (i.e. Edgar on the left and Dieter furthest to the right).

“Happy” Dieter briefly played with Tangerine Dream as a bass guitarist, shortly after woodwind player Steve Jolliffe (who would later rejoin TD in 1978) had departed. Tangerine Dream's lineups during this period were very volatile, and there were multiple musicians who had short stints in the band before moving on to other things.

I’m unable to find much information about Dieter from web sources (such as what his full name was), but some background about him is detailed in the liner notes of the 2012 Esoteric Recordings CD reissue of Electronic Meditation:

>The remaining members started to look for a suitable replacement, eventually finding one in the unlikely form of bass player "Happy" Dieter. Dieter was a well-known figure in the Berlin underground, a would-be hippie on the fringes of the left-wing urban guerrilla group the Umherschweifende Haschrebellen (Rambling Hashish Rebels). Soon he was regularly playing with the band including a concert in the courtyard of the bombed-out Bayernhof restaurant in Potsdamer Platz, which was one of Tangerine Dream's earliest TV appearances.

A 7-minute film of the concert, frequently called the “Bath Tube" or "Bathtub" session, was recorded for Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) and is readily available online. Present in the audience of this performance was Conrad Schnitzler (and Michael Hoenig, who himself would briefly tour with TD in 1975), and he joined the band shortly after Dieter had departed. 

The Tangerine Dream Wikipedia page lists Dieter as having passed away in 1974, but I am not entirely sure what source that is referenced from. I’d love to know if anyone here has more information about him.

Plil Lollins

Electronic Meditation

Release Year: 1970

Label: Ohr

The first Tangerine Dream album “Electronic Meditation” bears little resemblance to their more well-known Berlin School electronic period. Instead, the music here more closely resembles the free-form and at times abstract jams of contemporary psychedelic rock groups, such as Ash Ra Tempel, while also making heavy use of tape experimentation and unconventional instrumentation. This is their only record to feature Klaus Schulze and Conrad Schnitzler as band members, both of whom continued to make influential electronic/underground music long afterwards. 

If you’ve heard this album and/or want to share more commentary about it, feel free to discuss further in the comments section. As with all of these weekly discussion posts, we encourage you to give it a listen if you’re unfamiliar with it!

Dean has had a prolific career as a painter and graphic designer for well over 50 years. Although he's best known for his continued work with Yes (most recently doing the cover artwork for 2026's Aurora), his iconic fantasy artwork has been used by a number of other artists (e.g. Budgie, Uriah, Asia, etc).

My favourites of his designs for Yes are the cover painting for Tales from Topographic Oceans and the inner gatefold artwork for Close to the Edge, but regarding other bands/musicians, I'm also very fond of his artwork for the Canadian jazz-rock band Lighthouse (used on the UK/European editions of One Fine Morning and later on the The Best of Lighthouse compilation).

Obligatory Discogs link

Good old Keith Emmerson.

While we’re talking about Amon Düül, I stumbled upon something interesting related to them a little while ago that I’d like to share.

As you may know, the majority of the Amon Düül discography (to clarify, this is not the better-known Amon Düül II) consist of material from an informal jam session recorded in late 1968.

This was the accompanying description of this photo that _Avalon_ gave:

“here's a photo my friend took of the many studio masters from that session owned by [k]arl hausmann. karl and him are stumped by what "kaputt" is”

For a bit of context, Karl-Heinz Hausmann is a former member of Amon Düül II, primarily as an engineer and keyboardist on the albums Tanz der Lemminge and Carnival in Babylon. He was also a member of the “Berlin Commune 1” associated with the ADI album Paradieswärts Düül, although he himself had no involvement with that album.

I’m curious as to what the numbers on these signify and whether “Kaputt” might be a working title for one of the ADI albums or literal (i.e. indicating damaged/unplayable tapes). Or it could be something else entirely! Who knows.

Paradieswärts Düül

Release Year: 1971

Label: Ohr

Not to be confused with the better-known Amon Düül II, Amon Düül were a group of (largely) amateur musicians affiliated with the eponymous art commune. Although most of their discography consists of material from informal late 60s jam sessions, their only album for Ohr is a more tranquil (albeit still lo-fi) acid-folk album, featuring personnel from Amon Düül II and Xhol Caravan. Recommended for psychedelic/folk rock enthusiasts and fans of Amon Düül-related projects.

If you’ve heard this album and/or want to share more commentary about it, feel free to discuss further in the comments section. As with all of these weekly discussion posts, we encourage you to give it a listen if you’re unfamiliar with it!

All of these are courtesy of Forgotten Yesterdays' Yes timeline. Check it out if you're curious; the entire site is a great resource and I would hope that fans are aware of it already.

All of these are courtesy of Forgotten Yesterdays' Yes timeline. Check it out if you're curious; the entire site is a great resource and I would hope that fans are aware of it already.

Hi everyone! Welcome again to our weekly album discussion. Any album can really be featured, whether it be well-known, overlooked, or by a more contemporary artist - as long as it’s in the style and spirit of classic krautrock/kosmische Muzik.

If you're interested in discussing this week's album through instant messaging or are just interested in talking with more fans, check out the Kosmische Muzik Discord server!

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Volume 10

Release Year: 2014

Label: Studio Fleisch

One of many 21st century krautrock-inspired groups active in Germany (and elsewhere) is the Aachen-based band Electric Orange, who have been continually releasing music from the early 1990s up until the present day. The music on their 10th release consists of freeform psychedelic jams, with ominous and at points droning atmospheres that make use excellent of dissonant effects, violin, and textured drums.

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For those who’ve heard the album - what are your thoughts? Feel free to share any opinions, experiences, etc. related to it.

This was written as a general reference for another subreddit where people have been constantly asking questions about this issue, but I thought I'd share it here too.

As of the past day or so, a lot of people have reported seeing unusual/spam uploads on the Spotify profiles of multiple artists. This sorts of impersonation on streaming platforms is not unheard of, but this is the first time I'm seeing something like this happen simultaneously on such a large scale, as these are being spammed on the pages of no less than 25 artists! Interesting enough, those artists are mostly older rock/electronic music.

They usually have an icon of an AI image depicting a generic male rockstar and are all credited to one of multiple fictitious label names.

These are all the ones that I've identified, but there might be more. The names of these labels indicate that whatever person/entity is uploading these is likely based out of Indonesia, e.g. Pematangsiantar.

• LATFIA MUSIC INDO
• GLOBAL MUSIC INDIE INC
• SIANTAR MUSIC GENERATION

The following artist pages appear to be affected (not an exhaustive list, just those I found using a quick search):

• 13th Floor Elevators
• Anekdoten
• Kevin Ayers
• Syd Barrett
• Beggars Opera
• Captain Beefheart
• Country Joe & The Fish
• The Electric Prunes
• Edgar Froese
• Gentle Giant
• Richard Hell
• Klaatu
• K. Leimer
• Mahavishnu Orchestra
• Pere Ubu
• The Pretty Things
• Klaus Schulze
• Soft Machine
• Spacemen 3
• Spooky Tooth
• Steamhammer
• Chris Squire
• Michael Sterns
• Tuxedomoon
• Collin Walcott

What has happened is that a music distribution platform (think something like Distrokid) has been exploited and used to upload music to these profiles without authorisation. Both music distribution and streaming platforms lack safeguards to prevent this type of manipulation, and this is a decently well-documented phenomenon. It's been frequently implicated in both impersonation and music piracy (i.e. uploading music that is not legitimately licensed for streaming platforms) for the purposes of siphoning revenue from name recognition. Here's another example of one of these pirate labels that I wrote about a while back; very strange either way.

These unequivocally have no affiliation with the artists they are credited to. The impersonated musicians and/or their management are likely not even aware this has happened yet, as for the most part these have been uploaded within the past day. While I haven't seen any reports of these uploads specifically being mirrored on other streaming services, the distribution exploit being used is a problem on most major streaming services and is not exclusive to Spotify.

While this is in part also an issue with distribution platforms, Spotify absolutely does carry the responsibility to remove crap like this! Sadly even the "better" streaming platforms don't seem to care about similar forms of exploitation, as I've seen similar cases of AI content pollution on platforms like Quboz.

These unequivocally have no affiliation with the artists they are credited to. The impersonated musicians and/or their management are likely not even aware this has happened yet, as for the most part these have been uploaded within the past day. While I haven't seen any reports of these uploads specifically being mirrored on other streaming services, the distribution exploit being used is a problem on most major streaming services and is not exclusive to Spotify.

While this is in part also an issue with distribution platforms, Spotify absolutely does carry the responsibility to remove crap like this! Sadly even the "better" streaming platforms don't seem to care about similar forms of exploitation, as I've seen similar cases of AI content pollution on platforms like Quboz.

Anyway, don't listen to this crap, and if you continue to use streaming services, please be aware that artist impersonation is continually an issue there.