LEMMINGMANIA

Watch out for the Green bubble rain-coated man

I am perhaps the wrong person to be posting the first review of this album, and must admit to some surprise that it has remained unreviewed to date. Surely there must be AD2 fans out there who have this album, and can offer a fan's perspective.

While AD2 do not appear in my own list of favourites, I do appreciate some of their music, especially their more accessible works such as their "live in London" album. I find however that their "Improvisations" can be challenging to the point of being unlistenable. The good news (for me at least!) is that this album is generally tight, with little if any such improvisation.

The tracks here are all short, with nothing over about 5 minutes. Recorded in 1975, much of the music actually sounds even older, although this is mixed with some futuristic sounds, or at least they would have been at the time.

The opening track, "Archangels thunderbird" is one of the classic rock tracks. For me, the version on AD2's "Live in London" album is superior, but there are some excellent "dirty" guitar riffs here. Track 2, "Light" is something of a surprise, as it almost has a country feel. The vocals are light, with slide guitar backing.

There's certainly a good variety of styles on the album, the Led Zeppelin like sound of "Between the eyes", the Hawkwind ("In search of space" era) influenced "Jail-house frog" and "Soap shop rock", and even a Moody Blues harmonies tinged "Tables are turned". The high pitched vocal style, as on "Between the eyes" and "Green bubble rain-coated man" (great title!), is something of an acquired taste, but "All the years round" has a more pleasant female lead which has folk similarities.

There's not much in the way of prog here, most of the tracks being simply structured, but "Green bubble.." has an interesting time change midway, "Jail-house frog" manages to fit several different tunes (and some chanted choruses) into its 5 minutes, and the final (title) track, gathers pace as it develops. Indeed the title track is probably the most adventurous on the album, with what sounds like Mellotron made choral vocals, sax, and some good guitar work.

For those looking for the more indulgent, experimental AD2, "Lemmingmania" has little to offer. It is however a competent collection of tight, well performed compositions, with a few slightly more complex pieces, and plenty of the distinctive style for which the band were renown.

Here is a really fantastic album filled with special excerpts and fine unreleased tracks from their classic line up. As you would expect all the tracks are nice and spacey with that unique song writing quirkiness. AMON DUUL II were pretty much IMHO the pinnacle psychedelic prog band and this album clearly demonstrates my view. Psychy warbled fuzz ripping guitar soles, hand and tymbral percussion, outer-worldly keyboard and organ swirls encapsulated all in a fascinating display of cerebral music.

To be honest, this album only contains a couple of items really worthwhile, but to my humble opinion also the best ever song AD II made. Unreleased before, perhaps once a b-side or added to fill up this album, although the fact that the album was named after it perhaps suggests differently. Lemmingmania therefore. It sounds out of tune at first, but perhaps deliberately, once you heard it a couple of times and got used to it, it adds to the genius of it. Perhaps it's an odd part of my person, but somehow I appreciate it most in a song if it is obviously able to communicate directly to (and with) your mind and senses, without additional lyrics / voices, in short; when the song itself tells a story. These kind of songs are rare, the very few I consider to belong to this family of music are made by Captain Beefheart (more than 1), Chicago (Happy cause I'm going home) and some by Anthony Phillips.

Perhaps one of the reasons why these songs appeal so much to me is that I can't describe in words what these songs try to tell, but only in emotions. So, either my emotions are blocked or emotions are blocked anyway and they have their own language that you can only feel and understand, but not speak. If so, these kind of songs enrichen your spiritual world and form a road there, where it is not possible or very difficult to reach it otherwise. Perhaps through drugs, but I do not use them.

Try it :)

(The 4 stars because of above of course)

I had this compilation back in 1975. I was 15 and I had a friend who told me about this german band. He was a DJ in a local radio station and he hosted a program that showed a lot of prog stuff (those were the days!). It didn´t last long, but I remeber always hearing his one hour show every day of the week. So when I heard that this album was available in Brazil I saved some money from my allowance and got it. I really loved it. Even today I think this CD is a good introduction o the music of Amon Düul II. Here you have the more concise, song-format, tracks that show much of this important band was capable of in the studio. Their very own brand of krautrock, psychedelic/space rock, hard, eletronic and progressive. They were quite unique.

For me all tracks are excellent, but I always hold special atention for the heavy Archangel's Thunderbird, the beautiful Green Bubble Raincoated Man (one of singer Renate Knaup-Krötenschwanz best perfomances ever). the funny Tables Are Turned and the instrumental title track. I usually don´t like compilations of prog bands like this, but this one is an exceptional fine one.

A good starting point for the newbie. 4 stars.

For the first time since High School I actually got Christmas week off right up to New Years Day. This is significant because I now wanted a sountrack for this time but it had to be something I hadn't reviewed yet, so I picked this compilation album from my favourite Krautrock band. This was released back in 1975 and it does seem strange having an AMON DUUL II record that consists of songs all under or around 5 minutes in length. Chis Karrer one of my musical heroes once said of his band AMON DUUL II that "Improvisation was everything". Chris is a multi-instrumentalist playing mostly guitar, sax and violin and he was right, it's what most AD II fans love about this band. Still I just love their sound which is why I picked this one up despite that there are no songs from their masterpiece "Phallus Dei".

I'm not going to review this song by song because i've already done that with most of these but I will focus on the four previously(at the time) unreleased tunes. I do have two of those unreleased tracks as bonus songs on the "Yeti" edition I have, and they are "Between The Eyes" and "Rattlesnakeplumcake". The former is rather dark and heavy with some brief crazy vocals and prominant guitar while the latter has male and female vocals with some excellent violin play on it. There are two songs on here that I haven't heard before. One is "Light" which was an earlier version of "Stumbling Over Melted Moonlight" from the "Tanz Der Lemminge" album. This one has vocals on it and I quite like it even if it is fairly straight-forward. The other is the title track which is my favourite on here. It was apparently released as a single back in the day but it sounds so different from their usual sound. This is a very uplifting, heavenly sounding track that simply transports me. Kind of like some of those SENSTIONS' FIX songs. Just a great instrumental.

My edition has four bonus tracks all from the "Viva La Trance" record. There are so many excellent tracks one here that for the enjoyment level alone I have to give this 4 stars.