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elcome to the Digital Meltd0wn Music Blog. The aim of this blog is to introduce the readers to music that is out of print, commercially unavailable, released under a creative commons license, or with approval by the featured artist. The majority of the music posted here would be considered underground. Don't let that fool you into thinking that the music featured here might be any less enjoyable than that of the mainstream artists you hear on the radio, as this couldn't be further from the truth. Please keep in mind that the majority of the artists that appear on this blog, along with their respective record labels, are not wealthy and need your support. If you enjoy the material that you find here, please support the artists/labels by purchasing their material afterwards. If you are an artist/label that would prefer to have your material removed from this blog, simply leave me a comment, and I would be more than happy to promptly remove the offending post. In addition to running this blog, I also work on a few other projects during my spare time. You can find links to those, as well as a few other important links associated with Digital Meltd0wn in the menu bar above.

Monday, January 21, 2008

German Oak - German Oak


In the strange Olympic summer of 1972, the Dusseldorf instrumental group German Oak entered the Luftschutzbunker, or Air Raid Shelter, in order to record their eponymous first LP. A free form rock band founded by a small community of 5 German hippies / "avant garde" artists back at the beginning of the 70's. Their self title effort was recorded in a WWII air raid bunker. The cover of their self title album (a militaristic image which is a portrait of the third Reich military force) provides an illustration of anger expressed by the WWII’s young generation against their parents. By consequence German Oak's music is very tortured, dark and weird, dominated by heavy, "distorted" guitar solos & rhythms. The background creates "painful" & "ambient" sequences thanks to delay echoes, electronic "fuzzy" noises & repetitive bass lines. A funkadelic/jazzy felt punctuates with discretion this grandiose, "creepy" instrumental album. A first CD reissue was offered by Witch And Warlock in 1991. Today this album is re-edited by Radioactive records (2005). In a rather discretion they also released the moody, cloudy and experimental epic-kraut "Niebenlungenieg"

Following in the footsteps of the percussive and organic Organisation and the remarkable Dom, German Oak had every reason to believe that this 3rd LP to be recorded by a Dusseldorf band would be warmly received. Unfortunately, German Oak were not only wrong in their assumptions that locals would embrace their music, but even local record shops rejected all the group's attempts to sell the albums in city outlets. Such was their lack of success that 202 of the original 213 copies were stored in the basement of the group's organist until the mid-1980s, when a thirst for undiscovered Krautrock finally brought German Oak back from the dead.
(Year of Release: 1972)

Track List:
1. Airalert
2. Down In The Bunker
3. Raid Over Dusseldorf
4. 1945 - Out of the Ashes

Download: German Oak - German Oak (60.3MB)

10 comments:

Stephanie Bonham said...

There doesn't seem to be a link to download this, but I look forward to hearing this.

HiFidiot said...

yeah, me too! Sounds quite interesting! Strange name but your description makes me very nervous....

:-)

Anonymous said...

I was fortunate enough to hear this album several years back,but would love to hear it again.I did a hunt for it a month or so back and most copies were around 100USD

Hoping you see these comments

Anonymous said...

Go to
http://zerodb-audiocomunity.blogspot.com, you can find it there.

Anonymous said...

really ugly hippie-shite!

Visuals said...

Different but Interesting...especially Down In The Bunker

Anonymous said...

I can't download it either

Anonymous said...

I can't download it either...

daniel said...

i love this album, despite the nazi stuff - and i do think it's ridiculous that you would take songs 3 out of the album just because they had nazi names

Zer0_II said...

Daniel: I'm not sure what you're referring to as far as the "Nazi connection" is concerned. I didn't remove anything, so if there is anything missing I'm certainly not aware of it. Do you care to elaborate?