Tarot

Ever since Rose told me about the MP3-Blogs Aggregator, I've been obsessed with it, and the bunch of MP3-Blogs I've found [more about them later].

So because sooner or later I have to try my hand at everything, I'm going to do the occasional MP3-bloggin' here. Of course, the songs will be posted for evaluation purposes only. I love and support well-made music and make every effort to support the artists I love by purchasing their work; to that end it is my policy only to post what I own, and at that probably out-of-print stuff. To download the songs, right-click on the bold orange link and then select "Save Target As..." or "Save Link As..." to save the MP3 files to your computer. I won't be keeping an archive of the songs, so if it's gone, it's gone. Also, if you own the copyright to one of these songs and would like it removed, please let me know.

Walter Wegmueller And The Cosmic Couriers - Der Weise (The Wise Man)

Walter Wegmueller recorded this album with the Cosmic Couriers - a supergroup of German rock ('krautrock' as it is affectionately known): Klaus Schulze, Manuel Goettsching, Walter Westrup and others - in December 1972 and it was released October the following year on Ohr Kosmische Musik. Wegmueller was an itinerant gypsy mystic and painter and to accompany the album he painted an entire Tarot set of 78 cards; they are repoduced in the CD boxed-set reissue on Spalax that I have.

The album is 22 themed tracks, one for each of the Major Arcana, or trump cards: The Fool, The Wheel of Fortune, the Devil, Death, and so on. Mostly it's rocking funk/cosmic sounds like you'd expect, quite silly but pretty good and really fun to listen through. This track, Der Weise (The Wise Man), is one of the more sedate numbers, and features Klaus "Quaddro" Schulze, one of the pioneers of electronic music, as the narrator/vocalist. It's a piece of pure beauty, and you'll dissolve in bubbling syrup as, at the conclusion and with an apparent complete lack of self-consciousness, Schulze begins to hum along with the melody.

I'd probably write something a bit more coherent about the track if I was in a slightly better condition; The Jarman, Dave, and myself have just spent an enjoyable evening getting toasted, listening to Tarot and performing tarot readings - using Wegmueller's deck - in between bouts of trans-lingual etymological nerdery. You can also listen to snippets of the entire album at TIGERSUSHI.

Oh, and Julian Cope spazzed magnificantly about the album in his Krautrocksampler book.