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Multi-instrumentalist Johannes Schulz aka Vintage Cucumber from Brandenburg/Germany is wandering through his very own cosmos. He celebrates his psychedelic elaborations in best krautrock tradition, meandering under hallucinogenic terms, offered in an intriguing, well thought out format.

Of the many legendary artists to emerge from the Krautrock movement, few anticipated the rise of modern electronic music with the same prescience as Popol Vuh - they were the first German band to employ a Moog synthesizer and their work not only anticipated the emergence of ambient, but also proved pioneering in its absorption of worldbeat textures. Keyboardist Florian Fricke was deeply immersed in Mayan mythology at the time he formed the group with synth player Frank Fiedler and percussionist Holger Trulzsch, and his interests were reflected in the spiritual themes of their 1970 debut, Affenstunde, the first experimental rock release entirely built around the Moog Synthesiser (with the add of percussions to provide a mystical flavour)…

Strut present 'Metal Dance', a new compilation from one of the UK's most respected DJ / producers, the man behind Playgroup and original founder of the legendary label Output Recordings, Trevor Jackson.

Götz Friedrich’s 1981 Elektra film sets Richard Strauss’ opera in a dark and dingy abandoned 20th-century factory populated by grungy denizens in psuedo-Greek garb. Elektra herself appears like some deranged homeless woman reeking with sweat and slime (in the rain). And the depravity doesn’t stop there. Friedrich plays up the work’s sado-masochistic elements, with bloody whippings and an orgy sequence involving nude lesbians bathing themselves in the blood of a sacrificial ram. Now you might think that all of this detracts from the score, but on the contrary, the production matches image to music so brilliantly that anyone seeing this opera for the first time would think they were created for each other (which allows you to ignore the occasional useless, almost silly gesture, such as the frequent and prolonged shots of Agamemnon’s bloodied visage during Elektra’s opening monologue).