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Agitation Free

A Berlin improvising band formed in 1967 whose 1972 Goethe-Institut tour of Egypt, Lebanon, Cyprus and Greece shaped Malesch, a record of long guitar and synthesizer pieces that shares members with Tangerine Dream, Ashra and Guru Guru.

Origin
Berlin, Germany
Years active
1967-1974, 1998-present
Genres
krautrock, psychedelic rock, space rock, electronic
Labels
Vertigo, Barclay, Garden of Delights, SPV, M.I.G. Music
Also known as
Agitation

Berlin, 1967

Agitation Free formed in Berlin in 1967. The name began as Agitation, picked from a dictionary, and Free was added, by one account from a poster for a free concert and by another after a free show once another band had the first name. The original quartet was Lutz Lueuel Ulbrich and Lutz Ludwig Kramer on guitars, Michael Fame Guenther on bass and Christopher Franke on drums, and German Wikipedia says it came from the merger of two Berlin rock groups. Early sets were mostly covers, then long improvisations with liquid projectors, slides and self-made films. Ulbrich saw Pink Floyd in England in 1968 and brought back The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, and the Swiss composer Thomas Kessler encouraged a synthesizer purchase and taught the band improvisation.

In 1970 they played the First German Progressive Pop Festival at the Berliner Sportpalast and trained with Kessler at the Elektronik Beat Studio in Berlin, and in 1971 they took part in Klangszene II and in a performance of John Cage's HPSCHD at the Berliner Philharmonie. Franke left in 1971 for Tangerine Dream, and Michael Hoenig, who joined with the drummer Burghard Rausch in early 1971, came in on keyboards and electronics.

Egypt and Malesch

In 1972 the Goethe-Institut sponsored a tour of about three weeks through Egypt, Lebanon, Cyprus and Greece. Hoenig said they were the first rock band those audiences had seen; in Alexandria there was no PA so a home stereo was used, drum stands were lost, and a stagehand pulled the power cables mid-set while Rausch kept playing. Their improvisations ran 45 to 60 minutes. On a flight from Egypt to Lebanon officials suspected the synthesizer was a bomb and asked them to play it. They also played the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Malesch was recorded in 1972 and released that year on Vertigo (catalog 6360 607), with Wikipedia naming Music Factory instead. Hoenig said the music was entirely improvised, recorded on stacks of two-inch tape with the best chosen, and that portable UHER recordings from the tour supplied collages. The cover shows the band in the step pyramid of Djoser at Sakkara, and the title is a word heard often in Cairo meaning roughly the acceptance of something as part of a bigger picture. 2nd was recorded in July 1973 at Studio 70 in Munich, and used motifs and themes with improvised material between them. Agitation Free never played in the UK, Ulbrich said.

Dissolution and returns

The 1974 line-up gave a WDR radio concert in Cologne on February 2, 1974, later released as At the Cliffs of River Rhine and Live '74, and played its last concert in Paris on April 21, 1974. German Wikipedia says the band dissolved on November 12, 1974 after a farewell concert in Berlin; Hoenig says the original line-up split in June 1974. Last (1976) came out on Barclay from studio tapes of 1974 and live ones from 1971 and 1973.

Four 1974 members reunited in 1997 at the Traenenpalast for Ulbrich's 45th birthday, and River of Return (1999) followed. In February 2007 a one-week Japan tour, invited by the businessman Gen Fujita, was the first time the 1974 line-up played together in 33 years, recorded as Shibuya Nights. They have toured again since 2012, played the Kesselhaus in Berlin in April 2013, released Momentum in 2023 and, with Axel Heilhecker on guitar and Tim Sund on keyboards from 2024, Live in Berlin in 2026; Hoenig no longer performs live. Offshoots include Franke in Tangerine Dream, Hoenig with Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream and later film scoring, Axel Genrich in Guru Guru, and Ulbrich with Ashra and Nico. They are on the Nurse with Wound list.

Members

Records

Songs

Neu!

Where to go next

Official

Reference

Interviews

Fan sites and communities

Sources

  1. Agitation Free, Wikipedia
  2. Agitation Free, Wikipedia (German)
  3. You play for us today: Agitation Free, The Berliner (2012)
  4. Agitation Free, Agitation Free