After some electronic effects "Kontakt" goes in an entirely different direction with airy acoustic guitar and keyboards and no rhythm section, like suddenly emerging into sunlight after the darkness of "Kollaps." As the track progresses seamlessly into "Kollektivivtat" and then "Individualitat" it again picks up momentum, adding electric guitar riffs and an interesting mixture of bongos and snares as the organ cuts loose, until finally everything dies except the thundering percussions on some quasi-ethnic workout with some electronic sounds thrown in. "Kollaps" starts off with ritualistic drumming, a creepy organ riff, a crying baby, and guitar licks that threaten to explode at any moment. From the Floyd-ian space rock of the first two tracks the record moves into even stranger realms on the four segued pieces that make up the second side of the original vinyl.
Often referred by the title Free Electric Sound, Gila's debut is an amazing work, full of acid guitar freakouts, spacy organ and mellotron, exotic rhythm structures, and loads of electronic effects to fully realize the psychedelic visions. Though most of the first Gila's live shows went unrecorded, in 1999 Garden of Delights released Night Works, a Cologne concert from early 1972 that had aired live on the radio. After Veit toured France with Amon Düül II in the winter of 1973-1974, the second Gila broke up in the middle of 1974 as Fricke and Fichelscher focused much more on Popol Vuh and Veit briefly joined Guru Guru before he moved on to other groups and eventually became a freelance painter. As the title suggests, this was a concept album about the genocide of Native Americans and later that year, it was released by Warner. Again in Dierks' studio, they recorded the album Bury My Heart in Wounded Knee in the summer of 1973. Whereas the early Gila constantly performed live, this new version of the group was mostly studio-only, with just one live appearance on a television cultural show. Given their pedigree, the new group sounded almost like Popol Vuh at the time, though performing Veit's compositions rather than Fricke's. The group's sound was very different, dispensing with the wild acid jams for mellower acoustic rock. By 1974, Veit was ready to re-form Gila, this time enlisting Popol Vuh bandmates Florian Fricke on keyboards and Daniel Fichelscher on drums, as well as vocalist Sabine Merbach. The group broke up the next year and Alluno soon went on to Sameti while Veit joined Popol Vuh, at which time they started doing the soundtracks for Werner Herzog films. The eponymous record, often referred to by the title Free Electric Sound, was released later that year by the BASF label. By 1971, the band had gained local fame with a creative blend of Pink Floyd-inspired space rock with long psychedelic jams and in June of that year, they entered the studios of Dieter Dierks to record their first album. Stuttgart, with its university and arts academy, was a fertile place with many rock festivals and parties, especially at the end of the '60s, and Gila had no problem finding gigs, though the group did have to shorten its name from the original Gila Fuck because the vice squad kept showing up wherever they played. The original group consisted of two Germans, Fritz Scheyhing on Mellotron and organ and Wolf Conrad "Conny" Veit on guitar and vocals, as well as Walter Wiederkehr from Switzerland on bass and Daniel Alluno from Bordeaux, France, on drums. The group emerged from a political commune in Stuttgart in southwest Germany in early 1969 where it was a multimedia project that combined music with film, slides, and poems. Night WorksGila was an early-'70s Krautrock group that may not have been as well-known as Ash Ra Tempel or Amon Düül II, but with an eponymous first release created a work that ranks with the classics of the cosmic space rock genre.