Die Grüne Reise (The Green Journey) - A.R. & Machines

Originally issued by Polydor in Germany in 1971, Reichel played all the instruments here, and produced the entire thing himself in partnership with Frank Dostal, who also penned the English lyrics and had previously done time with Reichel in the popular West German beatgruppe, The Rattles. The Green Journey is a masterpiece of doubly/triply-tracked, tape-machined, echo-plexed and looped space-guitar-madness, with a host of skronk, thunderous percussion, tribal whoops, and head-busting, three-dimensional, lysergic lyrics. As the artist himself proclaimed, "I was just trying something out with my guitar, when out of the blue, the Akai X-3300 began to repeat endless cascades of guitar echoes. My guitar suddenly sounded like ten."
The Green Journey is a phenomenal debut, a fully realized Work of Art that propels the listener on a metaphysical journey thru the nuances of their self-identity, culminating in a sonic recreation of Jacques Lacan's "mirror stage" entitled "Truth and Probability." Unlike Manuel Gottsching who employed echo-guitar to suggest the vastness of the external world (outer space and nature), and Gunter Schickert who used echo-guitar to replicate the rhythms and feelings of the modern city, A. R. made echo-guitar a tool to plumb the depths of the inner psyche, bringing to light the shared collectivity we keep buried within.--Phallus_Dei
Tracks:
1. Ich bin (Fröhliche Abenteuer für Sinne, Geist und Triebe) - I Am (Happy Adventures for Senses, Mind, and Inclination)
2. Station 1: Globus / Im selben Boot (In the Same Boat)
3. Station 2: Schönes Babylon (Beautiful Babylon)
4. Ich bin dein Sänger. Du bist mein Lied (I'll be Your Singer. You'll Be My Song)
5. Station 3: Body (A Book's Blues)
6. Station 4: ....als hätte ich das alles schon 'mal gesehen. (....as If I Have Seen All This Before.)
7. Cosmic Vibration (Ein Nachmittags-Konzert) (An Afternoon-Concert)
8. Come on, People
9. Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit (Ein Lexikon zur Selbsterkenntnis) - Truth and Probability (A Lexicon for Self-Knowledge)