Cosmic Jokers

The compilations Planeten Sit-In and Sci Fi Party, both originally released in 1974, are a contemporary document of the legendary jam sessions of the Cosmic Jokers. Under a conceptual mantle, the recordings were brought to a young audience. Among the musicians the elite of the krautrockers of that time, like Manuel Göttsching, Klaus Schulze, Jürgen Dollase, and Harald Grosskopf. Plus, Dieter Dierks, who was responsible for the recordings, arrangement, and mixing, but also participated as a musician. Newly transferred from the original analog tapes and carefully remastered for the first time.

"Whereas the two earlier Cosmic Jokers albums, the eponymous first effort and Galactic Supermarket, offered long, intense, free-flowing jams, Planeten Sit-In contains much shorter snippets of music patched together with cross-fades and weird electronic effects. The effects -- burbling electro noises, high-pitched twees, and other sci-fi sounds -- are even more prevalent, erupting out to drown out the drum, guitar, and bass rhythms, as if to make full use of the quadraphonic sound of the original LP. As a much more disjointed effort, and lacking the sustained grooves of the earlier records, Planeten Sit-In still has many fine moments, from the galloping rhythms and siren-like rising synth tones of "Raumschiff Galaxy" to the rotor-blade electronic patterns and echo effects of "Electronic News." The longest track, "Der Planet des Sternenmädchens," adds some vocal trills by Gille Lettmann and moves from loping jam band mode to far more improvisational realms with slow, almost haunting, keyboard tones, to come closest to the prior records. And like those records, Planeten Sit-In represents cosmic space rock in its purest and trippiest distillation." - All Music