About A.R. & Machines

Producer, composer and musician from Hamburg (Germany), Achim Reichel is a key figure in the explosion of krautrock. Reichel was first a founder member of The Rattles at the beginning of the 60s. In 1968 he formed Wonderland with the drummer Frank Dostal. Late 60s he launched his first solo musical project called A.R. & Machines. Musically it provides a supreme sonic musical voyage turned to cycled psychedelic guitar playing with lot of echoes and delay. The first album, Die Grüne Reise, was published in 1971 in collaboration with Frank Dostal. The album presents an ambitious collection of spacey rock jams featuring a lot of electronic effects and arrangements. This album prefigures "acid" trips of krautrock guitar / minimal electronic explorers like Manuel Göttsching. The guitar freakouts and the weird imagination of the first effort continue to prevail in the following inspired, confused and various Echo (1972), A.R. 3 (1972), A.R. IV (1973) and Autovision from 1974 (generally a mix between guitar soudscapes and psych pop orientated songs). Reichel decided to abandon the project after 5 studio albums. Today A.R. & Machines remains a high class standard of hypnotic space-echo guitar inventions.