AGITATION FREE - Portrait of a Band
Press clippings, Agitation Free and the Beat-Studio in "Musikscene"
Excerpt from " Musikscene " Part 1. for Info please click
Excerpt from "
Musikscene
" Part 2. for Info please click
Press clippings, "Final Reunion"
Critical lambasting of "Final Reunion" in "Rock News". I
would say, "Practice! Practice! Or, heaven forbid, you will have to become
a music critic!" (With thanks to Udo Arndt and his mother, the
Kammersängerin)
Press clippings, Beirut
for translation please click-on desired passage
Press clippings, Beirut translation left Side
With some incense from India, listeners would have no need for hashish.
Agitation Free under a tree at the American University
Some members of the audience in the hall
It is when pop music very closely approaches jazz, without actually becoming
jazz, that it gives the promise of perfection in all its forms. We hadn't
expected what we heard from the German Group Agitation Free when they played in
the American University Hall.
The group uses electric musical instruments, and in most pieces the music is
direct and ascetic. I was often reminded of the piece "Krishna"
("The Creator") from the Incredible String Band, although both groups
are essentially different in style. The end effect is nevertheless the same: a
sense of absence, and a short journey through insane noise and loud chaos.
This music electrifies inner feelings, excites them and lets them swirl away
on their own. Even the softest, gentlest parts are stirringly loud and
revolutionary. It is like a prayer: a prayer from people tossed on a turbulent
sea, or lost in a frightening, vast desert. Then we hear an echo, as if we
would stand in a deep valley and cry and shout. Sometimes this music is like
the roar of wild animals in the forest (without going to the bizarre extremes
of Stockhausen's strange musical experiments).
The music of Agitation Free, no matter how strange and remote it may seem, no
matter what electric instruments may be used, is powerfully moving, and the
fact that it moves the listener makes it successful.
Sometimes the music changes with the rhythmic beating of the drums, punctuated
by a smack of electric guitar and crash of the cymbals, resembling the piece
"Easter" from David Burdon(?).
The domineering drums and cymbals are characteristic of pop music. In
Agitation Free the drums and cymbals serve to unify the various melodies that
are played in a piece. The music vanishes with them, then reappears, loud and
strong.
more on the right-hand side
translated from Arabic into German into English!
- Transl
Press clippings, Beirut translation right Side
The music of the second piece summoned forth the image of a horde of people
storming a ruined city, in order to level it to the ground. The electronic
instruments led them to the city, but the drums turned them loose to rage and
multiply, their pace becoming ever faster and stronger.
Then a member of Agitation Free announces a quiet piece. But, like the others,
it is also strong, loud, and productive. This is possibly a strictly German
phenomenon. The power is in their nature, as it is in the Germans'.
At this demonstration, to which about a thousand spectators gathered in and
outside the hall, only Indian incense was lacking; with this aroma, the hashish
addicts would have been able to cast their opiates aside and still embark on a
clear and colorful trip, sustained by this hysterical and impalpable music.
Agitation Free's loud electric music filled the hall to the bursting point;
the sound was ready to explode and force its way outdoors. Had it occurred
under the stars, it wouldn't have been so suppressed and contained; the concert
then would have been a carnival of pop music. It's a pity that open-air
concerts are not allowed here in Lebanon.
A well-known American group sang, "The cities will burn...you are the
ones who will rise from the ashes..." Agitation Free have burned the
cities down; so now it is up to us to bring the wreckage back to life.
translated from Arabic into German into English!
- Transl
Press clippings from France
Article in "
Liberation
"
1974
. Please klick for further Information
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