Timely reissue of the late Konrad Schnitzler's (1937-2011) seminal debut solo album. Nothing short of a milestone in the history of electronic music, 'Rot' marked a radical point where man and musical machine became far better acquainted. Up to this point in 1973 Schnitzler had already been integral to the genesis of both Tangerine Dream and Kluster, both bands born of the Zodiac Free Arts Lab in West Berlin during the pivotal year of 1968. And by '73, the convergence of subversive, counter-cultural philosophy and his studies under German Fluxus member and avant-garde artist Joseph Beuys converged in the stark grammar and uncompromising logic of his solo debut. It's a monolothic statement, shirking the shackles of prior academic praxis and forging an instinctively steely sort of psychedelia embracing Beuys' "extended definition of art" to act as a bold conduit for the alien and, quite importantly, "new music" and sounds made possible by analog synthesis. With this album he physically shaped a new sound world, unafraid of using all of his machine's atonal and motorik capabilities to express something elemental and uniquely nuanced like little else before or since. Quite simply, it's heavier and more psychedelic than almost anything else from the same era, and yet somehow does it all with a wry sense of groove which was effectively prototypical Techno, and a rare humour found in the track titles 'Krautrock', and 'Meditation'. It's a crucial addition to any connoisseur's electronic music collection.
