Dzyan were one of the hidden treasures of krautrock — a Mannheim band who fused jazz-rock, progressive rock and the music of the Far East into something startlingly original. Across three albums in the early 1970s, and above all in the trio of Eddy Marron, Reinhard Karwatky and Peter Giger, they crafted a virtuoso, exotic world-groove unlike anything else of their time.

The short version

Formed in 1972 in Mannheim, Dzyan began as a studio quintet before slimming to the trio that made their name. Their two trio albums — “Time Machine” (1973) and the masterful “Electric Silence” (1974) — blend virtuoso jazz-rock with sitar, saz and Mellotron in a heady mix of Western fire and Eastern mysticism. Obscure in their day and revered now, they remain among the most adventurous bands the German scene produced.

Mannheim: two bands in one

Dzyan, named after an esoteric mystical text, came together in Mannheim in 1972 as a studio project led by bassist Reinhard Karwatky. This original quintet recorded a self-titled debut for the small Aronda label, then promptly fell apart. Undeterred, Karwatky rebuilt the band as a trio, recruiting the multi-instrumentalist Eddy Marron — fresh from the group Vita Nova — and the Swiss drummer Peter Giger. Signed to the Bacillus label, produced by Peter Hauke and recorded at Dieter Dierks’s studio, this was effectively a new band, and the one on which Dzyan’s reputation rests.

Kraut-jazz-rock and the East

In their classic trio form, Dzyan played a virtuoso, all-instrumental jazz-rock that could recall John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra in its fire and complexity — yet shot through with a krautrock rawness and a chaotic energy all their own. What set them apart was their deep embrace of the East: alongside guitar, bass and drums, Marron and Karwatky reached for sitar, saz, tambura, Mellotron, synthesizers and even an invented instrument called the “super string”, melting jazz, rock and Asian music into a hypnotic “psychedelic world-groove”. Few bands of the era ranged so freely between Western jazz-rock and Far-Eastern mysticism.

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Dzyan, Time Machine and Electric Silence

The self-titled debut, “Dzyan” (1972), made by the original quintet, is an eclectic, shape-shifting hybrid of jazz-rock, psychedelia and krautrock, complete with saxophone — erratic but unmistakably its own. With the trio came a huge leap forward: “Time Machine” (1973), four lengthy, complex jams of virtuoso kraut-jazz-rock crowned by its eighteen-minute title track. The trio then perfected the formula on “Electric Silence” (1974), their masterpiece — an even more adventurous world-beat journey of exotic instruments and dissolving boundaries, where music meets meditation and composition meets improvisation, all wrapped in a gloriously acidic Helmut Wenske cover. Dzyan disbanded soon after, their work complete.

Album by album

Three albums tracing one of krautrock’s most adventurous journeys. Tap any title for its guide.

The players and afterwards

At the heart of Dzyan was Reinhard Karwatky, the bassist who founded the band and steered it through every change, alongside the gifted multi-instrumentalist Eddy Marron and the Swiss drummer Peter Giger — the latter so in demand that he briefly stepped away to play with ECM artists and Eberhard Weber. When Karwatky, the last original member, left at the end of 1974, Dzyan came to an end. They had lasted only a few years and made just three albums, but those records — especially the trio’s two — have become treasured cult classics of the German scene.

Where to start

Begin with “Electric Silence” (1974) — the trio’s masterpiece and one of the landmarks of experimental German rock, its blend of jazz-rock fire and Eastern mysticism utterly absorbing. From there, “Time Machine” (1973) offers the same virtuoso trio in slightly rawer, more rock-driven form. Together they capture a band operating at the outer edge of what krautrock could be.

Why they still matter

Dzyan matter as one of krautrock’s great unsung adventurers — a band who fused jazz-rock virtuosity with the instruments and spirit of the East years before “world music” had a name. Obscure in their time, their two trio albums are now prized among connoisseurs of experimental rock for their daring, their craft and their sheer strangeness. For anyone exploring the jazzier, more exotic corners of the German scene, they are essential listening.

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