Agitation Free – 2nd, Vinyl LP
Factory Sealed (New)
History remembers them as one of Krautrock's second-string groups, but Agitation Free deserve to be remembered more kindly. As we get further and further away from the source it becomes harder and harder to fully understand exactly how a band like Berlin's Agitation Free came to be. For here is a truly cosmic music, a blend of Krautrock, psychedelia, jazz and a strikingly well-structured ambient sort of funkiness that can only come from fantastically talented musicians spending hour upon hour upon hour playing for no one's pleasure but their own. As a young band Agitation Free would play galleries and conservatories as often as they played student halls or club shows and so they don't sound in any way tied to either. Drummer Christopher Franke – who would later go on to huge success with Tangerine Dream – was still a teenager when this LP was recorded, but it's his loosely precise/precisely loose grooves that allow his band-mates the room to, well, blow a few minds, to be honest. While their debut, 1972's Malesch, had been influenced by the band's interest in Egypt, the follow-up was a much calmer affair. What's important is that, rather neatly, Agitation Free sound entirely free of agitation – indeed, they sound free of almost everything else, up to and including gravity itself. Around six glorious minutes into Laila Part 2 a sweeping guitar part sails in and lifts the whole piece like a warm current lifts a sea bird, it's an extraordinarily beautiful moment in an album liberally blessed with them. Found sounds and bird song appear in songs like In The Silence of the Morning and First Communication, positing the band's own experiments as part of a very natural ambience, while Haunted Island is the sort of fantastically doomy, Floyd-like freak-out that no band has even attempted for 40 years. Considered for decades to be among Krautrock's second-string artists, Agitation Free are, on this evidence alone, one of the most deserving of your attention.
By Rob Fitzpatrick
