s e a n

Malesch contains seven tracks running more or less continuously based in improvisational rock (i.e. jamming), with the individual tracks serving to divide the music by mood conjured. Like a lot of jamming, parts of tracks begin with the band finding its feet before everyone is on the same page, at which point the results are captivating and hypnotic. Agitation Free is not as noisy as many of their peers, and sound almost like e-music at times (it is of note that Michael Hoenig later wrote some of the best Berlin school electronic music). There is a definite Middle Eastern sound aimed for, which is somewhat superficially achieved but leads to some nice harmonic variety all the same. Apart from closing track "Rücksturz", with its stunning riff, no individual cut here blows me away. It is the aggregate of all the cuts which results in a half hour of excellent, involving mood music. I can take or leave the majority of Krautrock bands, but in my view Malesch is one of the first ten albums you should try from that sub-genre. review by Sean McFee — 1-8-05 —

j o e

Agitation Free was an early-wave Krautrock band of the extended jamming persuasion. A notable pedigree of musicians at one point or another passed through their ranks, including Christopher Franke and Michael Hoenig of Tangerine Dream, and Lutz Ulbrich of Ash Ra. Malesch, the band's debut, was recorded after a trip to Egypt. The Middle Eastern influence brought back from this sojourn courses through the veins of the music, with live banter and incidental music recorded in Cairo serving as a link between tracks. However, after reading several reviews proclaiming its greatness from the rafters, I walked away from this quite underwhelmed. I find it hard to get worked up over anything on here. Actually, the performances are astonishingly lukewarm. There is nothing that distinguishes the jamming from that of myriad bands that similarly thrived in the Era of Peace. When the band gets 'experimental,' such as the synthesizer manipulation of "Pulse," this sounds more like piffling around then the divine surge of cosmic revelation. The need of a well-developed composition to really reach in and grab hold of the listener's guts remains unmet. There are moments that hint at potential, such as the piece "Rücksturz" which the band also presented on their live album Last in equally brief form. Ultimately, though, this remains just potential and not crystallization. Given its considerable reputation, I unfortunately must conclude this is a rather overrated album. review by Joe McGlinchey — 12-16-04 —

m a t t

Despite its big reputation, Agitation Free's first album, Malesch, didn't move me very much at all when I first got it. This probably had something to do with my already owning and liking the band's second album (2nd) and expecting that the first one would sound similar to it. But whereas Agitation Free's second album is more or less a Krautrock take on Canterbury-styled fusion, Malesch is more like a Krautrock version of early Pink Floyd. Its strengths are in the realm of atmosphere and mood instead of group interplay and if you buy the album with hopes of hearing the kind of twisting, guitar-led passages that define the sound of 2nd (as I did), you're bound to be disappointed; listen as hard as you want, but that stuff just isn't there. Additionally, there's a superficial Middle Eastern influence (the album was recorded shortly after the group spent some time in Egypt) that the band seems far more impressed with than any listener likely will be. Nevertheless, once I approached this music on its own terms, a good deal of it clicked with me. I think that the first three tracks (roughly, the first half of the album) are pretty strong. True, there are moments on both "You Play For Us Today" and "Sahara City" when I half expect the guitar riff from "Interstellar Overdrive" to surface, but this is mostly because Agitation Free nail the atmosphere so well, not because the actual music sounds ripped off. The production is so clean and has such depth of detail that Malesch can be viewed as offering an alternate version of Dark Side of the Moon, had Pink Floyd decided to move further into space from the previous album's "Echoes" rather than to become more song-oriented. My favorite track on the album, "Ala Tul," combines the spacey atmosphere with a driving rhythm that, in my opinion, bests any 4:50 of similarly-styled music from Pink Floyd. I don't find the second half of the album to be quite as interesting — it gets a bit more droney and I think it has less character. "Pulse" passes inconspicuously and "Khan El Khalili" sounds to me like a lesser version of "Sahara City." Things pick up again with the title track, though, which uses what sounds like a sequenced synthesizer to a hypnotic effect. The short "Rücksturz" ends the album energetically, but it's very much a fragment; it's too bad the band couldn't have worked it into a larger piece. Overall, a very good album. review by Matt P. — 10-6-05 —