Wallenstein - Cosmic Century [1973]

Wallenstein were one of Germany's best known "space rock" bands, clearly indebted to Pink Floyd but also developing a personal style of their own. Jurgen Dollase founded the group Blitzkrieg as an international group with Bill Barone (from the USA), Jerry Berkers (from the Netherlands) and Harald Grosskopf (from Germany!). Dollase had previously studied art and classical music. In late Autumn 1971 Blitzkrieg had the repertoire ready for an album, but as a British group already was using the name "Blitzkrieg", the German group changed their name to Wallenstein and kept Blitzkrieg as the title of their first album. This featured four very long tracks in a symphonic progressive rock style (all written by Dollase) and almost completely instrumental. Dense, complex and powerful stuff!
Mother Universe (1972) pictured Dollase's grandma on the sleeve acting as the grandmother of our universe. Musically this was a more dynamic album, introducing some quieter, folky passages with acoustic guitar between the more usual powerful and pompous electric guitar and organ outbursts. Jerry Berkers wanted to do more of these folky things, and quit Wallenstein to record his own solo album Unterwegs - which musically I find it to be in a rather dull singer & songwriter tradition. After Dollase and Grosskopf had taken part in the large scale projects Lord Krishna von Goloka (Sergius Golowin), Tarot (Walter Wegmuller) and the Cosmic Jokers-sessions, they recorded Cosmic Century (1973) in September 1973. This album brought another change of style, clearly influenced by Dollase's recent "cosmic" experiences. It was marketed as the first album by the 'symphonic rock orchestra Wallenstein' (text on the sleeve). It consisted of five refined symphonic rock tracks and a short piano piece. Dollase's strained vocal parts lowered the overall standard of this album, but apart from this the music was good! Sadly this was to be their last great album...
Stories, Songs & Symphonies (1975) attempted to bring in more conventional rock and jazz styles for a kind of extended fusion, but was largely an artistic failure. Only their adaptation of Bartok's music on "Symphaty for Bela Bartok" was of much interest. The rest represented Dollase's failed attempts to be a serious singer-songwriter. Wallenstein split in 1975 and Bill Barone returned to the USA. Harald Grosskopf was engaged as the drummer for Klaus Schulze, Ashra and more recently Central Europe Performance.

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