Ein Blick über das verlassene Zentrum Berlins am Potsdamer Platz am Ende der 60er. Musik: Eruption (Conrad Schnitzler, Klaus Freudigmann, Wolfgang Sequenza Seidel The deserted center of Berlin at the end of the sixties with the atmospheric music by: Conrad Schnitzler, Wolfgang Seidel, Klaus Freudigmann.)
recorded ca 1972, released 2006 by QBICO (www.qbicorecords.com)
The Wire-November 2005 issue 261:
"Eruption was a multidisciplinary freeform ensemble put together by cellist, violinist and early electronic improvisors Conrad Schnitzler in 1970 as an adjunct to his work with Kraut bahamoths Tangerine Dream and Kluster. They seem to have functioned more as a thinktank for the then explosive Krautrock scene than a straightforward gigging group, with a revolving memebership that at points included members of Embryo, Ash Ra Tempel and Agitation Free. Details of Eruption's Berlin actions have appeared in most comprehensive German rock overviews, but up until now there has been no audio documentation, making Qbico's archival unearthing of a 1970 live performance from Studio Freudigmann, Berlin all the more significant. Although the picture on the back features footage of a big band show with members of Amon Dulul and Ash Ra Tempel, the LP documents a trio set from Schnitzler, Wolfgang Seidel and Klaus Freudigmann that is much more punk than the group's links to such centres of kosmische boatfloat might suggest. The music starts out fairly fragmented, with sustained violin drones caught in a flux of scattershot percussion, short passages of silence and wowing effects. Although it feels a little tentative at first, this slightly more deliberate approach is borne of a hard-thinking improvisatory ethos, based more on exploring aspects of interactive dialogue than free rock gush. But after the parameters of the exchange have been fully established, the trio start to move the music out, with tracks based around oscillating analogue tones, feral violin and distorted improvised vocals that sound uncannily like the freeform punk of Dylan Nyoukis's Blood Stereo and Decaer Pinga. Side two feels a little more of its time -a good thing- with fuzz-wah, organ and drums generating circular hymns to nada that are as ferociously monosyllabic as anything by Klaus Dinger's La Dusseldorf. The inspired combination of rock dynamics, freely improvised dialogue and manhandled electronics makes this another one of those historically upending releases that captures a moment of conceptual precognition decades before it would be fully assimilated. But all the jawdropping formal considerations aside, Eruption makes for a thrilling stand-alone ride" David Keenan