The eighth ring on Nicolas Moulin's label Grautag comes from two brilliant sound artists of German musical scene. Gunter Schickert could be considered one of the men behind the curtains of German krautrock scene since late 60'ies and first 70ies: he was one of the first guitar player which played a style that got widely known as "echo guitar", mainly based on sort of loops of repeated notes and overdubs, which was extensively used by many krautrockers. Even if his technique and his style were not so different from the ones of Achim Reichel and Manuel Gottsching of Ash Ra Tempel, his two best solo recordings, "Samtvogel" and "Uberfallig" (recently re-released by Bureau B label), have been deservedly rediscovered during Internet age. He splits this record with German-Palestinian musician and performer Ghazi Barakat, another brilliant sound artist, whose Pharaoh Chromium project (named after a song of the band Chrome) draws inspiration from free jazz, ancient past and near future rituals, science fiction novels and radical architecture groups like Italian Superstudio and Archizoom as well as by the sonorities of the psychedelic avant-garde of the 70ies, the industrial bands of the early 80ies and middle-far east nuances that got performed by Ghazi, who usually wears a golden mask on live stage, by a wide set of ethnic flutes and electronic devices. They already met in the mid-eighties in West Berlin, but Barakat discovered the similarities of his style to Schickert's approach just after he listened to a re-release of the above-mentioned "Samtvogel" in 2010 so that many discussions about possible collaborative works followed. Then Barakat introduced Schickert to Nicolas Moulin in order to release some of his recent outputs as well as the first fruits of their collaboration an that's how this release was born and what should have been a douple lp became a triple lp featuring two very long bicephalous tracks. Most of the compotional ideas are quite simple, but both the iterations which dig into listener's psyche little by little, and the "ritual" halo of each track, which could infer many reviewers to label it as a dark-ambient release, require immersive listening sessions in order to enjoy them: the slow flutes, the sneaking circles of a synth-brass and the gradual electronic wrapping on the initial "Bamiyan", which last 22 minutes and 22 seconds, evoke the images of the "executed" statue of the Buddhas of Bamiyan that got dynamited by Taliban icnoclasm, while the sinister tolling and the oppressive echoed sonic entites of the following "Campfire" are the elements which get closer to the so-caled dark-ambient. The almost orchestral parade of heavy echoes, ghostly drones and resounding guitars on "A6" reaches the highest hypnotical peaks of the release by means of tonal stonewalls that seem to evaporate whenever they got erected and vaguely resound on the amniotic buoyancy of the entrancing "Katharsis", where some listener could perceive some resemblances with Starts of The Lid. Such a feeling of amniotic floatation keeps on wrap listener on the awesome space-walking of "Galaktik Debris" - the first collaborative track by Barakat and Schickert-, where your eardrums could meet many strange objects in the thich layer of stardust, including guitars which are in between U2-like intro and Eastern chords. Last but not least, the final collaborative track 'Music D'Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud' where I guess Ghazi and Gunter made a really interesting imaginary score for Louis Malle's noir movie "Ascenseur pour l'echafaud"...not an easy task if you consider that the OST of the movie was an ad hoc jam session by Miles Davis...