Human Being
Live At The Zodiac – 1968

“You can’t paint a German landscape once a tank has driven through it,” Anselm Kiefer

Here we have a previously unreleased and widely unheard live recording of this prophetic avant group’s first show in West Berlin in 1968. This is a throbbing, demonic whale dirge; it’s unhurried, deliberate and dull. Occasionally the players develop a sustained theme (ghoulish howling, a broken hell train chugging away from the station, chain gang grunts, an upset and deranged troop of mordor gate-beasts swinging through a tangle of weighty molasses, breaking free, and tumbling off of a nearby cliff one by one like stupid lemmings and landing with a thud onto an old, deeply fastened war drum) before allowing it to recede into a dark, incomprehensible rumble. The piece shifts and changes, but never really develops into anything more than a succession of interesting experiments in found sound and patient free jazz appropriations. Regardless, portions here are truly frightening and the piece is worth a full listen. 56 minutes long.