Sand

The Papenberg brothers and Vester, along with friends Yogi and Gento, began playing in a band named P.O.T. (Part of Time) and opened for Can at a show in Cologne in 1971. Here they began a lifetime friendship with Can's manager Manfred Schmidt as well as with Klaus Schulze. When P.O.T. disbanded in 1973, the Papenbergs and Vester moved to Berlin at the urging of Schulze, and began working under the name Sand. Schulze recorded and produced their one and only album, Golem, which sold four thousand copies but failed to bring substantial recognition to the band outside of a handful of dedicated followers. Sand broke up the following year; Ludwig Papenberg joined the art project Amelith, while Ulrich Papenberg and Johannes Vester both continued on as solo artists but were unable to release any albums. In the late 1980s, several artists on the World Serpent label, among them David Tibet and Steven Stapleton, were so impressed by Sand's one recording that they wanted to rerelease it on World Serpent. After some difficulty, Tibet contacted Schulze and finally tracked Johannes Vester down. The resulting 1996 rerelease, Ultrasonic Seraphim, contains the entire Golem album as well as a variety of other studio recordings, both by Sand and by the band members individually.