Sold Date:
May 6, 2019
Start Date:
September 19, 2018
Final Price:
$28.00
(USD)
Seller Feedback:
687
Buyer Feedback:
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**Picture Disc edition with an insert of 8 pages and is also limited to
1000 hand-numbered copies.**
Against its remarkable, sprawling, and
lasting influence, it is hard to image the 1960’s and 70’s German sonic
counterculture as it was - a truly underground music, almost entirely
unknown beyond the borders of the country from which it sprang. Across
the ensuing decades, this scene - among the most ambitious, rebellious,
and experimental of its day, has offered an unparalleled wealth of
inspiration for generations of artists following in its wake, laying the
blueprint for a bridge between popular music and the approaches of the
avant-garde. Despite all the has come to light, the German underground
was so prolific, embracing such a diverse range creative approaches,
that it continues to yield incredible discoveries from the shadows of
time - a task of unveiling that, over the last twenty years, Garden of
Delights has faced head on, returning now with a beautiful picture disc
reissue of Kalacakra’s Crawling To Lhasa from 1972, an LP which is as legendary as it is sinfully overlooked.
Kalacakra,
taking their name from Tantric Buddhism, meaning wheel of time, was a
short-lived duo founded by multi-instrumentalists Claus Rauschenbach and Heinz Martin,
privately issuing a lone release - Crawling To Lhasa, before drifting
from view. Blending repetitive metronomy - a signature feature harnessed
by many of their Kosmische / Krautrock peers - Neu!, Can, Kraftwerk.
etc, within a territory of acid-folk weirdness which will be familiar
to fans of Comus, the album stands a singular document of the darkness
and light of the era. Drawing heavily on eastern and raga influences,
deploying the sitar, guitar, and percussion against sweeping passages of
flute, it's a stoner, freak-out wonder that pushes rock and folk into
wild new realms - framing the dreamy and idyllic, against the sinister
and depressed - perfectly capturing the complex dynamic of era defined
by incredible social and political upheaval and change, its dreams and
loss of innocence realized in sound.