Tone Float

Album Review

Tone Float is a very unusual record for 1970. There is no blues-rock, no guitar solo, and no catchy single hit at all. Though it contains some familiar parts, it is not easy to classify. The organ suggests early Pink Floyd, perhaps from the Piper at the Gates of Dawn album. And there is some flute and violin, sometimes played in a jazzy way. But suddenly the music leads into a percussion inferno, where the drum set sounds like kettledrums, with heavy gongs echoing, bells tinkling, and instruments altered past recognition. There are no common song structures; the tracks develop slowly and this can last even 20 minutes. The music is partly free in rhythm, as a title like "Rhythm Salad" already suggests. Sometimes there is an indication of the sound that Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider would develop later on the first Kraftwerk albums, but here there was no synthesizer.