(Review from progreviews.com, progarchives.com)

A classic of the German space genre, Agitation Free’s music is a combination of progressive rock and new instrumental music, with touches of Jazz and passages dedicated to an experimentation near to ambient. Their originality is due to the blend electronic and repetitive musics with a lot of ethnic elements.

Malesch, the band’s debut, was recorded after a trip to Egypt. The Middle Eastern influence brought back from this sojourn courses through the veins of the music, with live banter and incidental music recorded in Cairo serving as a link between tracks.

The album contains seven tracks running more or less continuously based in improvisational rock, with the individual tracks serving to divide the music by mood conjured. Like a lot of jamming, parts of tracks begin with the band finding its feet before everyone is on the same page, at which point the results are captivating and hypnotic.

Agitation Free is not as noisy as many of their peers, and sound almost like e-music at times (it is of note that Michael Hoenig later wrote some of the best Berlin school electronic music). There is a definite Middle Eastern sound aimed for, which is somewhat superficially achieved but leads to some nice harmonic variety all the same. Apart from closing track “Rücksturz”, with its stunning riff, no individual cut here blows me away. It is the aggregate of all the cuts which results in a half hour of excellent, involving mood music.

Line-up:
- Peter Michael Hamel / keyboards
- Michael Hoenig / synthesizer, keyboards
- Michel Gunter / bass
- Uli Pop / bongos
- Burghard Rausch / drums, keyboards, vocals
- Jorg Schwenke / guitar
- Lutz Ulbrich / guitar, keyboards

Track List:
01. You Play For Us Today – 6:15
02. Sahara City – 7:51
03. Ala Tul – 4:57
04. Pulse – 4:51
05. Khan El Khalili – 5:34
06. Malesch – 8:24
07. Rucksturz – 2:11

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