While pugnacious pub rock certainly ruled the place and time, it\u2019s not entirely surprising that Australia in the 1970s would lend a few welcoming ears to German krautrock. Consider the island-continent\u2019s enormous, daunting red-desert interior as a psychic setting, concomitant with a stuntman approach to illicit drugs and a knack for repurposing styles from offshore in a way that\u2019s rough, raw and right on the money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Melbourne\u2019s Cybotron are a known quantity to those with a penchant for psychedelic synth sounds of \u201970s, releasing three albums between 1976 and 1980. Cheers to Australian outfit The Roundtable for re-releasing their eponymous debut LP and 1980\u2019s Implosion<\/em> digitally, and cheers again for this additional find \u2013 a beyond-rare pair of live jams from 1976, when the band was just the duo of Steve Maxwell Von Braund and Geoff Green, tangling with an imposing bank of modular gear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two sprawling, quarter-hour chronicles of interplanetary excursions here, diligently observant of Berlin-school protocols. You want oscillations? Ring modulations? Ritualistic formulations in the manner of Popol Vuh, with perhaps a little ecstatic astro-sax \u00e0 la Hawkwind? Cybotron got you covered. And there\u2019s a bonus: the inclusion of the super-rare single 1980 \u201cRide to Infinity\u201d, a bit more polished, with a definite Italian flavour to it \u2013 il sapore del giallo<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n