PROF. WOLFFF

A fairly unknown German band from the early Seventies, Prof. Wolfff released a single self-titled work in 1972 that seems to completely fly under the Prog radar, and it's an album badly in need of rediscovery - perhaps for many listeners for the first time! The group played a mix of blues, psychedelic rock and acid-folk peppered with a tough Krautrock hardness, coarse vocals and light jazzy qualities, utterly dominated by the tastiest of heavy Hammond organ liberally slathered over the disc beginning to end! Bands like Deep Purple, Birth Control, Frumpy, Bodkin and even some of the Italian groups who favoured the instrument played in supremely dirty style in their sound such as Il Biglietto per L'Inferno and Il Balletto di Bronzo are easy comparisons, but although hardly commercial or even remotely radio friendly, the band grafted melodic tunes to their workouts, even if the vocals themselves were hardly easy to love.

The ten minute opener `Hetzjagd' is the longest and best track here, a powerful and dramatically unfolding rocker that explodes with a battery of 'Romi' Schickle's Hammand organ plied over almost every second of it. Several short but memorable themes are constantly reprised back and forth throughout, with plenty of energetic bursts and even a frantic up-tempo run in the middle all given life by the instrumental skill of the musicians and taken even further by Klaus-Peter Schweitzer's firm and coarsely charismatic vocals. After such a great opening that sets a very high standard, thankfully the rest of the album still manages to deliver a constant run of equally impressive shorter pieces. Although hardly a pop song, `Hans Im Glück' holds a frequently repeating punchier group-vocal chorus popping up between alternating slowly moody and rapid-fire snappy verses driven by 'Mondo' Zech's pumping bass and Michael Sametinger's nimble drumming, and `Missverständnis' is a bit too tough to be a true full-blown folk piece, acoustic guitars chiming over exotic percussion and a variety of persistent group vocals carrying a pleasing melodic tune.

The opening and close of side B's `Das Zimmer' reminds a little of Novalis with its hazy vocal and mellow acoustic guitars, but it picks up a spring in its step for an infectious and lightly jazzy break in the middle. Almost ten-minute closer `Weh Uns' is full of momentum, being all rumbling drumming, twin wailing guitars, bouncing bass, urgent group vocals and endless scorching brimstone-fuelled Hammond organ fire that culminates in a Floh de Cologne-like spoken word climax.

`Prof. Wolfff' will likely appeal to those who love the tougher vintage German bands but want something a little more structured that avoids the aimless drawn-out explorations that frequently came from so many of the Krautrock groups. Admittedly those who speak German will get much more out of the frequently darker political-flavoured lyrics here, but it still holds up as a forcibly melodic and rugged rocker with that relentlessly addictive Hammond organ sound. It truly is a rarely spoken-of dirty gem of early German progressive rock badly in need of reappraisal now that deserves to be placed alongside the higher regarded and more well-known classics of the Krautrock subgenre.

Five stars. (and a long-held personal favourite!)