SPACEBOX-KICK UP, LP, 1984, GERMANY

Following Jim's post of the debut LP by former Guru Guru bassist Uli Trepte's Spacebox project all the way back in February of 2007, here's their superb follow up from five years hence. Formed in 1975 to manifest, quote: "an authentic European, cyclic structured, minor dominated, modal harmonic, collective improvised, organic-electric live music", and named for the assembled kit of electronic effects devices that Trepte would run their instrumentation through, Spacebox during the latter half of their existence were part of a cadre during the 80's that manifested Krautrock's last real hurrah in the spirit of this genre's original flipped out formulation, the other's being L.S. Bearforce (soon to be posted), whose members Lotus Schmidt and Edgar Hoffman both feature here and Embryo, who Hoffman was a member of for their first four LP's and whom Julius Golombeck, the guitarist here would go on to join in the wake of Spacebox's dissolution. For those not yet clued into this wondrous stuff, the authenticity and intensity of vision and sound on Kick Up is not something one readily anticipates from a German recording dating from 1984, but the attack here is essentially indistinguishable from something that would have occurred during this genre's heyday, and though the sound might not be as firmly yoked to the compositional thrust that Trepte carried over from Guru Guru as was Spacebox's debut, it's still a stellar affair filled with characteristically inspired flights of frenetic abandon wrought with a rawboned grittiness and immediacy.

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