Günter Schickert

The fact that this album appeared at all in 1983 owes less to Günter Schickert and more to Steven and Alan Freeman, who sought him out for their Krautrock encyclopedia The Crack in the Cosmic Egg. On learning that Schickert had heaps of recordings in his archive, the Freeman brothers proposed compiling an album. Schickert agreed and handed over material which the English YHR label had released in cassette form. Kinder in der Wildnis is a more heterogeneous album than either of its predecessors, understandably so, since the pieces it contains are not immediately related to one another. Occasionally (above all, on the two bonus tracks -- available here for the first time), the influence of Neue Deutsche Welle (German new wave), virtually omnipresent in that era, may be detected. For the most part, however, Schickert stays true to form and creates layers of hypnotic, filigree echo patterns, frequently accompanied by a dragging beat. To add to the atmosphere, he mixed in dummy head recordings made in Kreuzberg on New Year's Eve, 1980. In the following decade he augmented these with corresponding recordings from New Year's Eve, 1990. A rare treat awaits on the title track -- his four year-old daughter can clearly be heard singing the chorus at full pelt. Günter Schickert remains one of the greats of the Krautrock underground. Alongside his solo album work, he was a member of GAM, No Zen, and Ziguri Ego Zoo and composed a wealth of music for theater. He also painted (the drawings in the booklet, for example) and worked as a multimedia artist. His career in music began in the late 1960s, early 1970s in Berlin's legendary Zodiak Free Arts Lab (founded by Konrad Schnitzler and Hans-Joachim Roedelius). Among the similarly creative free spirits he met here was a certain Klaus Schulze, then drumming forTangerine Dream. He would later join Schulze on tour as a roadie and musician and sometimes looked after Schulze's house when he was on the road. They recorded an album together in 1975 and intended to release it under the title Ich bin zwei Öltanks ("I am two oil tanks"). Alas, it would be another 38 years until it saw the light of day (with the rather more sensible title of The Schulze-Schickert Session). Today, amongst other things, Günter Schickert is back touring with his old band, Ziguri.