10/23/2018

ROTW: Die Ersten Tage!

OK, it's about time we posted a new Record Of The Week. Yeah, sorry, we took a couple months off there. First, Allan was away for a summer vacation, y'know, and then after that Andee went off to Europe on tour, from which he's just returned. Oh, and in between we just might have procrastinated a little bit, too. However, it's not like there haven't been some rad releases worthy of ROTW-ness recently – like this one, especially!

In fact, when Andee found out about this release, his immediate response was a succinct "Holy shit!" That ought to tell ya something. The surprise unearthing of more music from a band that made one of our favorite albums ever (that we had thought was their only album) is of course worthy of a few holy shits. 'Cause yeah, the self-titled album from Austria's Paternoster was something that everyone on the aQuarius staff back in the day absolutely loved when we stocked it as a reissue. In our review for the aQ site, we said: "One of the saddest records ever made... what goths would have listened to had there been goths back then. Complete with full-blown psychedelic guitar freakouts, coupled with somber church-like organ and a vocalist who sounds on the verge of tears throughout the album. Oh so sad."

That one self-titled album is so great all by itself, but boy is it exciting to find that there are other, previously unreleased Paternoster recordings in existence. Turns out, before Paternoster's debut from '72 that we love so much, they did the freaky soundtrack to an Austrian sci-fi hippie movie called Die Ersten Tage (The First Days), directed by one Herbert Holba. It was entered into the 21st Berlin International Film Festival in 1971, and screened on TV in Austria too. Apparently this soundtrack effort got the band signed, leading to their self-titled album, some demos for which appear on this set, as well as tons of hitherto unreleased music, all material taken from master tapes. Basically, what you have here sounds like the fuzziest, proggiest, krautiest, weepiest 'library music' type grooves ever. Can had their Soundtracks, and Paternoster had this soundtrack.

Now-Again have done a swell job with this, just like with their deluxe version of the German Oak (another all time krautrock fave of ours) that was our very first Record Of The Week on this blog over a year ago. The triple cd edition of this is crammed with content, audio and otherwise, with lots of scene-setting background info provided to get you into the early '70s Viennese underground hippie zone of music, art and film. So cool.

A taste: