Sergius Golowin - 1972 - Lord Krishna von Goloka

Quality: 3.25 out of 5
Trip-O-Meter: 4.25 out of 5

Sergius Golowin was a German acid guru who seemed to be sort of along the lines of a German Timothy Leary. He appeared on some of the "Die Kosmischen Kuriere" label recordings in a fashion similar to Leary's appearance on Ash Ra Tempel's Seven Up. In fact, that's a pretty good analogy for this album. The good news is that krautrock luminaries such as Klaus Schulze are front and center playing the music here, although it doesn't really rank up there with their best work. The tracks are gliding, almost ambient works on top of which Golowin waxes mystical in German. Since he doesn't really sing, understanding German will definitely increase your enjoyment of this album. Having gotten "C's" in my high school German classes, I'd be just as happy to hear an instrumental version of this instead.

We find three long tracks here. "Der Regen" is a more acoustically based soundstorm, with acoustic guitars and light percussion standing in for the rain, with some synthesizer glimmers coming in later. "Die Weisse Alm" is the shortest track here at six minutes. It's even more acoustically based and almost pastoral sounding, with Golowin coming almost close to singing. Unfortunately, he's not very good at it and I'd still prefer to hear this as an instumental. The best track here is the 20-minute closer, "Die Hoch Heit." It's also the best track here. Golowin's presence works a lot better as the atmospherics are far more wacked out than on the first two tracks. There are even a few moments where our Cosmic Jokers have an opportunity to work up a nice head of psychedelic steam (too bad guitarist Manuel Gottching isn't on this one to really tear things up). Just before the halfway part, the music downshifts into a nice space rock groove with some nice flute leads. Then Golowin starts whispering, which kind of annoys me.

This is not at all an entry point into krautrock. But once you've properly digested your early-Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Cosmic Jokers and Ash Ra Tempel, and you're hungry for more, this isn't a bad place to get your teutonic fix. It's still has plenty of that weird early-70's krautrock cavernous sound that even the masters couldn't replicate by the latter half of the decade.

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Sergius Golowin - 1972 - Lord Krishna von Goloka