Limbus 4 - 1970 - Mandalas

Quality: 4 out of 5
Trip O Meter: 4.5 out of 5

Mandalas is an improvised early kraut rock freak out with plenty of sonic reference to Native American , Indian, and Tibetan culture. If that sentence sounds good to you, then it stands that you may very well enjoy this album. Unlike many of the other krautrockers of this time period, Limbus 4's focus is not on the electronics at all, but melding more acoustic percussive sounds with chant-like vocals, and organ.

As disc like this need to be viewed not as songs, but as a series of soundscapes. "Dhyana" suggests to me a long climb up a tall mountain, flanked by strange birds, holy men chanting, and disintegrating sunlight, until we reach the villagers' festival at the top of the mountain. We'll take the title of "Plasma," and convert that into a meditational journey through the fires of the sun. It's very esoteric sounding as it morphs from one sound plateau into another (for instance a percussive battle fading into a wall of wooden flutes). Between those two pieces are the short plinking random percussion of "Heiku" and the practically ambient "Kundalini."

I guess this stuff is similar to what Can referred to as ethneological forgeries. Here, it's even more free-form than even can, but it's an interesting little corner of krautrock that deserves your attention.

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Limbus 4 - 1970 - Mandalas