Cosmic Baby
Kinetik (Vinyl II)

Listening notes

Cosmic Baby's Kinetik (Vinyl II) was issued in 1996 on Time Out Of Mind, carrying the catalog number TO-007. The release is one component of what the title suggests is a larger Kinetik project, with this particular volume presented as a vinyl-only edition spanning a single twelve-inch record.

The record contains three tracks distributed across two sides. The A-side is given entirely to "Ready? (Die Prinzessin Auf Der Erbse)," which runs to eleven minutes and thirty-one seconds, its parenthetical subtitle drawn from the German title of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale "The Princess and the Pea." The B-side is divided between "Floating Construction" at seven minutes and forty-eight seconds and "Gummitwist" at ten minutes and forty-eight seconds, the latter title being the German word for the elastic skipping game known in English as Chinese jump rope. Together the three tracks account for just over thirty minutes of material.

The release is catalogued under the genres electro, electronic, and techno, situating it within the broader landscape of European electronic music production during the mid-1990s. Cosmic Baby, the recording alias of Harald Blüchel, was an active presence in that period's electronic scene, and Time Out Of Mind served as the imprint for this release.

The track durations across both sides reflect an approach common to extended twelve-inch formats of the era, with each piece given considerable running time rather than being compressed toward radio-friendly lengths. The German-language titles on two of the three tracks are a detail of note for collectors and researchers approaching the release as a document of its time and place. This is an unreviewed draft and all details should be verified against primary sources before publication.