Agitation Free – Malesch – Remastered –

4 reviews for Agitation Free – Malesch – Remastered –

1. 

   Greg Northrup – 2022-11-22

   Agitation Free‘s debut album is one of the absolute classic albums to come out of Germany in the 1970s. Agitation Free approached the groundbreaking experimental tendencies of the German scene from a different perspective than most of the other groups.
   Firstly, the delicate touch of melody was certainly not lost on the band, and they often bypass the strictly standoff-ish approach of many of the other German bands, infusing their albums with a gorgeous melodic drive. Malesch takes a slightly unique approach then the more jazzy follow-up, Second would, though both albums are in the same basic vein.
   The album extensively incorporates ethnic and world music influences, due to the fact that much of the album was apparently composed on a trip to Egypt around the same time. Much of the album features sound samples and recordings from the trip, which are used to divide the tracks.

   Most of the Arabic and ethnic influence is percussive, as exotic rhythms underpin Agitation Free’s melodic and powerful guitar interplay. You Play for Us Today” and “Sahara City” both build into exciting

2. 

   Sean McFee – 2022-11-22

   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 Rcksturz”

3. 

   Matt P. – 2022-11-22

   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

4. 

   Joe McGlinchey – 2022-11-22

   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 under whelmed. 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”