NEUE STERNE

This is German progressive rock. Definitely not their best album. Lyrics are in German. I find the ensemble lacks some melody. Some songs are not dull, but definitely not catchy, despite the tracks are well loaded. The keyboards are varied, but they could retain more our attention. The electric guitar give some hard rock touch. Most of the songs are rythmic, but the compositions are not very addictive: it is the hard to get" German style. The best track is "Konsequenzen", an excellent rythmic keyboards oriented track. There are some good acoustic guitar arrangements, and last track has a very good piano and guitar solos, through rythmic pattern and catchy backing vocals.

An absolute monster - a brilliant, maybe unique example of how prog and contemporary 80s pop could co-exist. Not catchy? Viel zuviel is one of the greatest hooks ever!:) Very fine pop music, written by people who could write and play very well, and side 2's suite, based around Konsequenzen is a delight; anyone who can make that horrid 80s technology sound cool has to be doing something right! Harald Bareth's vocals are at their best, too. It Bites almost certainly never heard this great album - amazingly. It points the way to a viable 80s prog, and unless you come out in hives when you hear early digital equipment, it is essential.

The final studio album proper by Anyone's Daughter, "Neue Sterne" accentuates the pop influence that was always around, but again without sacrificing any musical integrity. Several tracks certainly could have had hit potential in those early 80s, but still present alot of fine chops.

As with their second, self titled album, a few songs on "Neue Sterne" were redone better on live recordings, particularly the two openers, "Der Plan" and the title cut. Both of these parlay the band's natural melodic instinct into concise expressions. All the trademark playing remains, just in a more conventional structure. "Der Plan" is one of my favourite AD songs - its sinewy tune expressed by Bareth and his accompanists simply carries me off. Viel Zu Viel is built around a monster hook that openly competes with contemporary bands but with AD's added soloing skills. "Wieder weiter" is more rock than pop to be sure, and allows Ullmer to really let er rip on organ, while "Puppenspiel"'s minimalist keyboard figure is absolutely haunting, marred only by a sense that it could have developed a bit further.

The latter part of the disk includes more than a few morsels for the old fans and is almost entirely instrumental. It starts with an ode to Tangerine Dream in "Conzequenzen", followed by the classically structured near-instrumental "Illja Illja Lela". The latter in particular is a master's patchwork of related ideas and contrasting tempos, some heavy, others spacey. The album closes with "Reprise" which fittingly draws on themes from some of the previous tracks and includes sparkling jazzy playing by Ullmer and one of Krupp's best solos on the album. Some of it was recycled in a cut called "Carrara" that appeared on at least one live AD album.

From an artistic perspective, no album I can think of achieves such a fine balance of pop and progressive. For that reason, and its German vocals, it comes as close to 5 stars as anything from the band's catalogue. In the end, Anyone's Daughter never achieved that elusive 5 star quality in which each track augments the others, but to have produced 4 great studio albums in the eighties was a feat even Eloy did not attain. Sadly, they split up shortly after, and the reformed 2001 group is basically a "name-only" proposition. But there was no reason why this album could not have made them "new stars" of the German scene.

The last complete studio album done by the original line up of this great german band found them in their most commercial path since their inception. but this is far from bad or opportunistic music. In fact they actually produced quite a fine mix of pop and prog and the fact that they were not successful is not related to the quality of their songs. While a lot of other prog acts actually released terrible records trying to survive the late 70´s and early 80´s scene, Anyone´s Daughter bravely fought far longer than most. And when they finally gave in to the mounting pressures, the result was also better than most.

It would be a lot easier for them to sing these tunes in english if they really wanted to win an international audience. But I guess it was not their aim after all. All the music here is tasteful, elegant and very well done. Songs like Der Plan and the title track (the most commercial oriented on the entire album) could have been fine top ten hits. Sadly the whole thing didn´t work out as expected. Anyone´s Daughter would break up soon after and when they came back in the new millenium they were only a shadow of their former self.

Still the music of Neue Sterne stands. I particularly loved the last four instrumental tracks, all showing their skillfullness and fine songwriting abilities. I was glad to see that there were no fillers. The CD also has a good production. It was only a pity that they never got the recognition and exposure they really deserved. But before they left the music scene they released a string of fine prog albums in a time such things were so hard to find.

Fifth studio album from this german prog band, named Neue Sterne from 1983 is still a prog rock album but this time with pop overtones here and there. It sounds very much like Eloy same period Performance era. Still pretty enjoyble if just listen to Wieder weiter, Das Puppenspiel, etc, with of course typical sound for the '80's special in keybords section, very digital but not bad at all, really am example is the piece Konsequenzen. This is their most mainstream album from their catalogue, at least from first era, prog rock with some pop combinations, gives in the end a pleasent album but far from what they've offered on first 2 albums, the symphonic moments are almost gone living place to a more accesible yet well performed pop prog. So, 3.5 stars their most unitresting album from their first 5 years but with all that has plenty of memorable moments and almost intresting arrangements in places. The last 4 pieces shows that Anyone's Daugher still has great ideas to offer and aswell good musiciaship. Again 3 to 3.5 stars, worthy but not excellent.