Label: Mental Experience - MENT033

ケルンに住んでいたToby Robinsonと彼の友人でありフルクサスのアーティストRobin Pageが70年代に立ち上げたアンダーグラウンド/ホームメイドレーベルPyramid。Toby Robinsonはシュトックハウゼンでお馴染みのWDRで働いていたサウンドエンジニアでもありクラウトロックのコレクターとして知られている人物。本作はそのPyramidレーベルよりリリースされていたThe Astral Army、Cozmic Corridors、The Nazgulら、カルトバンドの貴重な初出別テイクを纏めた12インチ。Mental Experienceの一連のリリースでその音楽性は明らかになっていますが、本作に収録されている全テイクも激ヤバです。激激オススメ。





Pyramid was an underground / homemade label created by Toby Robinson and his friend Robin Page (the Fluxus artist) while they were living in Cologne, Germany, in the ‘70s. Toby - aka The Mad Twiddler, aka Genius P. Orridge – is well-known to Krautrock collectors as one of a number of engineers working at Stockhausen’s WDR and Dierks Studio in Cologne in the mid-1970's, where he assisted on recordings by many famous Kraut bands such as Can, Birth Control, Mythos or Dzyan.

Pyramid was home to a series of fascinating homemade albums by impossible and lost-in-time kraut-kosmische bands like Cozmic Corridors, Golem, Nazgul… all of them reissued by Mental Experience in the last years.

One of the most celebrated tracks from the Pyramid catalogue is “Interstellar Shortwave” by The Astral Army, originally included on the “Cologne Curiosities” comp. It’s a heavy-disco-kraut-groove, DJ friendly, Hawkwind-inspired track recorded circa mid-70s, and it’s presented here in its original version - pressed at 45rpm for maximum and expanding sound quality - and also as an edit by Gareth Goddard aka Cherrystones, who also offers another edit of “The Dead Marshes”, one of the tracks included on The Nazgul album. Here, Cherrystones transforms the spooky, avant-garde sound of the track into a kind of cinematic, horror Spaghetti Western soundtrack. To round up the 12”, there’s an experimental Cherrystones rework of “Daruber”, a dark ambient / kosmische classic by Cozmic Corridors.