Through the desert I hear: SAND

You know, there's krautrock bands and then there's KRAUTROCK bands, if you know what I mean. Aside from the essential groups such as Can, My Solid Ground, Guru Guru and Amon Duul II, Sand was a group of kosmiche fellows that really took IT there; whether they knew it or not. Like a lot of German bands of the 70s, they produced one or two albums and disbanded. What started out as a larger band in Lower Saxony (Part of Time) rose to some notarized acclaim to become Sand. I could pretend to know their history as good as Julian Cope, but why try, and honestly, he puts it marvelously in the following text [from his headheritage.co.uk] - -


When Gento and Yogi finally fled back to their homes in Bodenwerder, in Lower Saxony, they were looking for normality and safety. As members of the burgeoning Krautrock scene, they had loved their Cologne show supporting Can, and believed that their band Part Of Time could only become bigger and better. But they were all from the fanstastic land of Baron Munchhausen, a beautiful rural area whose biggest local town was the fairy-tale Hamelin, where once had come the famed and legendary Pied Piper. And though each was intrigued by these industrial cities in which they had been called upon to perform, they had all grown up playing in the woods and ancient quarries of the mysterious Weser Valley. Yes, they wanted to play the new rock’n’roll, but all were still mistrustful of the druggies and weirdos which permeated their new lives - full of student demonstration, anti-Cold War attitude and communal living. And so, when the rest of Part of Time decided to move to Berlin, both Gento and Yogi freaked out and quit the band.
Of course, this left the Papenburg brothers in a real fix. Both Ludwig and Ulrich were excellent musicians, but how should they proceed? Their lead singer Johannes Vester was a visionary lyricist, but he was no musician. True, he contributed a mean short wave radio to the soup of their live sound, but it was hardly going to help now that the drummer and organist had both run back to the forest.
However, this was the experimental Krautrock scene of 1972, and anything was possible. Can’s manager, Manfred Schmidt, had been enormously impressed by Part of Time’s performance in Cologne. He had sat up half the night listening to Johannes Vester’s notions of where experimental rock’n’roll should go next. And he had introduced Vester and the two Papenburg brothers to Klaus Schulze, who had in turn encouraged their plans to move to his own city Berlin, where anything was possible, and the weirder the better.



And so Sand was born - a cosmic and drummerless trio with a lead singer who played VCS3 synthesizer and sang mysterious and pedantic English lyrics in a voice like a Frisian Puritan reared on Melanie Kafka and David Bowie. Sample lyric? "He is an old loggerhead - actually long ago he is dead." Reviewer’s comment: Nuff said.
On arrival in Berlin, these three longhairs beat a path to Klaus Schulze’s front door and asked him to produce their first LP, to be entitled Golem. Why did they want to call it Golem? Well, Golem was a mysterious Jewish figure from the 16th century who had been fashioned out of the earth. The members of Sand used ‘Golem’ as a verb to describe the transmutations which occurred when they played together. In the words of Johannes Vester:
"To experience with the unknown, to give life... that was our impulse... [those lyrics expressed] exactly what was in our mind when we Golemned."

And so it happened that Klaus Schulze recorded five strange and extended ambient ballads by a trio of little people from Lower Saxony, who each knew precisely what sound they wished to achieve. Some of the songs hung around from their days as Part of Time, but these, now without drums or organ, were considerably extended in duration in order to consciously create "reduction, frugality, monotony, even mantric principles and elements", as Johannes Vester would later comment.
And so long as the results sounded like nothing else ever heard before they would all be quite happy. And quietly and seemingly quite easily, they achieved this goal. For Golem is a beautifully mystical and hauntingly empty record, inhabiting those same pre-industrial landscapes in which they had played as children. The songs were occasionally propelled by picked glassy acoustic guitars and pulsing monolithic bass, as though powered by the heartbeats of frost giants delicately picking their way through their ancient Saxon township in outsize and ill-fitting seven league boots. But often-as-not the music was left to hang in mid air, as hauntingly weird translated lyrics, strangely sung in some undefined post-apocalyptic space-cockney sauntered and cooed out their bee-zarre message over washes of belt-driven synthesizers and a-rhythmic agricultural ur-folk music.



read the rest here

So this is the part where I usually insert a little mixy mix of the sounds that blow my fucking mind away. And i'll get to that. But the story of Sand is sooo good, that I hope you finish reading Cope's history. And if you get the chance, his Krautrock Sampler is to die for.

A bit more on their history:

Sand were a one-record oddity from the early 1970s who might have been lost to obscurity if David Tibet of Current 93 hadn?t discovered their album Golem in the record collection of Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound. Sand?s record of strange surreal music is a highly original masterpiece of Cosmic Krautrock. The group was originally from the small town of Bodenwerder, in Lower Saxony in the northwestern part of Germany. Inspired by Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, and other psychedelic bands, Vester, the Papenberg brothers, and a couple other musicians formed the group Part of Time in 1970. They played many gigs, and after a short while, moved to Cologne where they met the members of Can as well as Klaus Schulze. In 1971 Vester transferred to Berlin to study psychology and the Papenberg brothers followed him, and as a trio they became Sand in 1972. By now they were becoming more influenced by the experimental rock scene of the city as well as the revolutionary politics of Berlin?s underground. At the time Klaus Schulze was developing a special recording process with engineer Manfred Schunke called Artificial Head Stereo Sound, which like Surround Sound created the illusion of the sound coming from everywhere. As Schulze had already met the group in Cologne, he chose them to record one of a series of records that would demonstrate the special recording studio. In 1974 the album Golem was recorded with Schulze as the engineer, and released that same year on the Delta-Acustic label, as part of a series of Artificial Head recordings from that same year. The group wasn?t actually too happy with the loss of dynamics caused by the Artificial Head technique, though it lends the music a far more trippy air, especially with headphones. Sand split up shortly after the record came out, and in 1975 Vester started a solo project, with the unwieldy name Johannes Vester and His Vester Bester Tester Electric Folk Orchestra. This group went back into the Artificial Head Stereo Sound studio to record a never-released album Born at Dawn, while the brothers Papenberg trundled back to Lower Saxony and other careers. Stapleton and Tibet eventually got in touch with Vester and in 1996 released the double-CD Ultrasonic Seraphim, which contained all of Golem, some other Sand recordings and alternative takes, and three of Vester?s Born at Dawn tracks.
I golemned it from here

Please enjoy, and if you can blast this on your headphones, I wont stop you.

Sand - 1. Helicopter
Sand - 2. Old Loggerhead

Tracks 1 and 2 are from the original album. Thanks to Stapleton and Tibet (Current 93), Golem was rerelased with more tracks, a small taste of the cosmos for you:

Sand - Doncha Feel
Sand - Burning House


Until next time sonic seekers.
xo
deegz