Biography
Named after the Greek Earth goddess, Gaa ranked among the finer but lesser-known cosmic Krautrock ensembles of the era, evoking a Teutonic Pink Floyd through its spacy organ textures and weightier guitar approach. In contrast to most contemporaneous German groups, the musicians chose to deliver vocals in their own tongue. Helmut Heisel, Peter "Bello" Bell, and Stefan Dorr assembled the band during the first months of 1973 in Saarland, the southwestern German region where they had previously performed conventional covers as the Phantoms before shifting toward more personal material. Within months the lineup expanded when Gunter Lackes, Werner Frey, and Werner Jungmann joined; Heisel soon exited, later expressing regret over the decision. The resulting quintet began performing live and, at one of those early shows, drew the notice of Alfred Kersten, proprietor of Kerston Records. Although Kersten initially urged the group to make an album, his interest had cooled by the time the musicians reached his Stuttgart studio in summer 1973. With scant funds, the band camped in tents for several days until Kersten finally honored the commitment and rushed the sessions to tape. Dissatisfaction lingered on all sides, yet the contractual LP Auf der Bahn zum Uranus (On the Track to Uranus) appeared in a limited 1974 pressing; roughly three hundred copies found buyers, leaving uncertainty about whether additional pressings had been destroyed or simply never existed. Gaa struggled to secure local engagements in the Saarland, so performances occurred mainly farther north across other parts of Germany. Jungmann departed in early 1975, prompting Heisel’s return, first on second guitar and then on bass after Bell’s exit. Under markedly improved circumstances the reconstituted lineup recorded three pieces totaling twenty minutes that were later issued on the CD Alraunes Alptraum. Persistent financial constraints halted completion of the projected second album, and the band dissolved in 1978. The members remained in touch and reconvened informally several times during the mid-’80s; although they never officially reformed, those casual recordings were added to the Alraunes Alptraum CD, by which point the music had grown noticeably less exploratory and more conventional.
Albums