Saturday, October 29

October 29, 2016 - Ash Ra Tempel - Light: Look at Your Sun (1972)


Today's selection is called Light: Look at Your Sun. It is from Schwingungen (Vibrations), the second album by German legends Ash Ra Tempel.

It starts off all quietly slow and bluesy, mournful like a funeral bell tolling, and I am reminded of the very beginning of Sir Elton's Funeral for a Friend. Then at 0:33 we hear the faintest of voices, like a kid hiding underneath the covers, afraid of something in the closet. The covers pull away at 0:42:

when I get up I look out of my window and see the blue sky and I know: He is my own

The lyrics are recited in a kind of shaking trance. The vocalist, the mysterious John L, sounds overloaded and afraid, along the lines of Mole and Rat in the presence of Pan in the Piper at the Gates of Dawn chapter of Wind in the Willows. The Sun! This dude is trippin. 

Light percussion comes in around 1:25. The drums pick up when we head into the second verse at 1:46:

In the morning, when I get up I stand in your garden you can see me you can hear me and I say: We are all one We are all one

When dude gets to and I say, get ready, because when it finally all makes sense to him it's like the ape realizing a weapon in the 2001 Dawn of Man sequence. He works himself into a frenzy and shouts out We are all one at 3:17, resulting in a furiously distorted guitar volcano of epic proportions from Manuel Göttsching.

Look at Your Sun and feel it all around you, ahhhh... OK...ow! my eyeballs! I was wrong, mama, that's not where the fun is!

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