The style of this album is slower and more atmospheric than their previous albums. AllMusic wrote, "TD's purest expression of 'space music', this double album ebbs and flows effortlessly from one tone cluster to another. Almost classical in construction, the music is structured so as to evolve in sections as one theme literally melts into the next."[2] Music critics often refer to Zeit as being one of the first (or perhaps the first) examples of dark ambient music.[citation needed]
As explained by Paul Russell for the 2002 reissue, "Zeit, which means 'time', was based on the philosophy that time was in fact motionless and only existed in our own minds."[1]
Zeit was released in August 1972 by record label Ohr.
Before the 2002 reissue, there were two common releases on CD: a single CD release by Castle Music and a double CD set. The double CD set from Relativity in 1987 is longer by a few seconds, mainly because of longer inter-track gaps. Relativity also put out a single cassette, with the following song timings: 20:00, 18:00, 20:12, 17:43. The double CD set has a light blue border on the front and back covers.
The 2011 release includes a second CD with the 25 November 1972 Klangwald concert at Cologne's WDR Sendesaal hall in West Germany, previously released as Tangerine Tree 52: Cologne 1972.
Zomba Music Publishers Limited had released five CD series back in 1996. They all had the same front geometrical lines cover but with different colors; the Zeit album had it in blue. Despite the sleeve notes and the CD containing the following song timings 20:00, 18:00, 20:12, 17:43, the real timings of track 4 ("Zeit") measured in any CD player at only 16:58 but the music starts with some extra 45 seconds of previously unheard music on all the other releases. If one may carefully mix-add these seconds to the beginning of the "Zeit" track from the any after-1996 releases, that would get about 17:30 full track. This also means, at a careful listening of the Zomba release, track 4 ends earlier than any of the after-1996 releases. (To add to the track timing confusions, a recently digitised copy of the original German Ohr label LP release from 1972, using a correctly calibrated Pro-Ject record deck, provides the following track timings, including track bands of several seconds on sides 1 to 3: 20:52; 20:35; 18:54; 18:46.)
Reception
In a retrospective review, Julian Cope's Head Heritage website described Zeit as a "monolithic and gloomy double album" that "wanders through droning passages of emptiness as the origins and formation of the universe are charted [...] It's the band at their most abstract and austere, their most difficult album."[6]
Legacy
Zeit has been mentioned by English musician Steven Wilson as his favorite album of all time, calling it the "birth of ambient music."[7]
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