Recorded in 1973 during a series of acid-fuelled all-night jam parties held at producer Dieter Dierks' studio near Cologne, Cosmic Jokers was the work of a veritable krautrock supergroup that included Dierks himself, Manuel Göttsching (Ash Ra Tempel), Klaus Schulze (Tangerine Dream), Jürgen Dollase and Harald Grosskopf (both of Wallenstein). This free-form freak out -- consisting of two epic tracks, the 22 min "Galactic Joke" and the 19 min "Cosmic Joy"--was first of five albums by the group to be released on Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's Cosmic Couriers label in the coming months. A first rate slab of space rock up there with other classics of the genre