Rolf Kühn

Cologne, Cornet Studios, January 1975. Rolf Kühn on clarinet with a band that reads like a German jazz roll call: his brother Joachim Kühn on piano and electric piano, Philip Catherine on guitar, Gerd Dudek on tenor and soprano, Albert Mangelsdorff on trombone, Bo Stief on bass, and two drummers, Daniel Humair and Kasper Winding.

Kühn chose not to record in the MPS studio in the Black Forest and brought in the engineer Wolfgang Hirschmann instead. In his own account, quoted in MPS's reissue notes, the label gave him freedom to try things he had not done: two drummers, and "completely freethinking players" like Mangelsdorff and Dudek in a fusion setting. He had come to MPS from a free jazz background, and Total Space is where he turns toward jazz-rock.

Five tracks: Uncle Archibald, Buzz, Lopes, the title piece and Miss Maggie. Dusty Groove calls it one of the trippiest records ever led by a clarinetist, with a larger horn section joining at points and a groove in the fullest MPS fusion style of the period. MPS reissued it on vinyl in 2022 and as the first LP of the 90th-birthday box The Best Is Yet to Come.

Japanese CD edition from Solid's MPS series.