WOLF CITY

The first encounter with this album was quite unhappy for me. I was in 3rd or 4th grade high school and a friend borrowed several "cool" LPs of "progressive" music from his neighbour, among which was "Wolf City". At that time I was already deep into GENESIS, VDGG and other prog stuff but I was not too delighted with AMON DUUL II. That music was too "strange" and I had a headache while trying to listen to "Wolf City". But now, many years later, I can see that for certain things you simply need to have experience in order to understand - in this case, the music listening experience. Today I find this album to be an excellent example of the "psychedelic/folk" branch of Krautrock, with beautiful interplay of acoustic and electric guitars, violin, percussions, piano and organ/mellotron. Each song is excellent although Renate's lead vocal sounds a bit unrelaxed. The opener and closer, "Surrounded by the Stars" and "Sleepwalker's Timeless Bridge", are highlights but also the title track has that weird and eerie atmosphere. "Deutsch Nepal" was celebrated among my friends back then in early 1980s as a sort of mini-Krautrock anthem, probably due to funny sounding German language (which nobody understood!), as a mockery of WWII Nazi officers giving orders to their subordinates. (Himmler's obsession with exploration of Himalaya region in order to discover the roots of "Aryan" civilization also comes to mind...) Overall, "Wolf City" is an excellent album that should be easily enjoyed by most of prog listeners and is perhaps a good introduction to their earlier, more psychedelic stuff.