AMON DÜÜL

The First Amon Düül didn't even consider themselves a musical group. They were all simply fellow travelers in the same radical-political Munich commune, who liked to make a lot of noise together (maybe too much, considering their association with the Baader- Meinhof Gang). Eight credited musicians (and I use the term very loosely) were involved in this mess, the end result of a single 1968 jam that provided enough material for two other albums as well, one of them a double disc.

The multitude of talent (and I use the term even more loosely) sounds impressive until you realize six of them, including '60s sex kitten Uschi Obermaier, were strictly amateur drummers, flailing away on an assortment of toms, bongos, and at least one blacksmith's anvil (!) So it's hardly surprising to hear the album open with an unrelenting 17-minute percussion orgy, setting the mood for an album-long train wreck of Neanderthal grooves and haphazard edits, with lots of Dionysian pounding and shouting.

Half the track titles reference the Sandoz Laboratories, manufacturers of the first LSD, making the album more of a stoner homage to altered consciousness than a commercial music venture. In its own crude way the effort was more honest and effective than the later Ash Ra Tempel / Timothy Leary acid epiphany of "Seven Up", with a certain integrity all its own: totally primitive to be sure, but still intact. The raw, lo-fi sound of the LP is part of its enduring mystique, although the 'Underground' of the title might have been literal: it sounds like the microphones were buried under several feet of loose clay.

If you subscribe to the Philosophy of the World articulated by The Shaggs (see my PA avatar) you'll know that technical ability isn't always a requirement for musical expression. In other words, it's sometimes what you say, not how you say it, and the message here was one of pure anti-establishment vitality (i.e. noise).

In its own barbaric way it's an astonishing document, almost singlehandedly birthing the entire Krautrock scene. But that doesn't make the album any easier to sit through. And because my innovative gravity well rating idea will probably never fly, I'm leaning toward a more wishy-washy compromise: two conservative but entirely respectable stars, for diehard Krautrock scholars and other masochists.

It may not have been the best answer to the lingering reactionism of post-Nazi Germany. But at least the music was worthwhile, in retrospect more so than the movement itself.

Unlike the more dedicated musicians of Amon Düül II, the first incarnation of the band (actually more of a disorganized collective) was strictly an amateur project, on this album playing a haphazard assortment of flutes, bongo drums and acoustic guitars (I'm surprised the lineup on these pages doesn't list 'cannabis' as a primary instrument). After two very noisy free-form LPs the unexpected pastoral gentleness - more Krautfolk than Krautrock - might have been a conscious reaction against the urban guerilla warfare of the Baader- Meinhof gang: fellow travelers in the same Munich commune and early fans of the band.

How else to explain the meandering 17-minute mantra "Love is Peace", really just a three- minute exercise in Flower Power stretched to fill an entire side of vinyl. Or the grammatically- challenged "Snow Your Thirst and Sun Your Open Mouth", the title to which is evidence of either a failed German-English translation or a fried brain stem. The two best songs here weren't even on the original album: "Eternal Flow" and "Paramechanical World", a pair of haunting, minimal Krautballads first released as a 7-inch single and nicely positioned here as a bonus coda.

The musical skills of the ersatz group were never more than rudimentary, and worked better that way. At the start of a musical decade that would increasingly become a celebration of sometimes empty virtuosity and thematic overkill, the disarming innocence of the playing on this album remains the melodic equivalent of a breath of fresh air.

Well, maybe not entirely fresh. The album is very much a product of its era, and hearing it for the first time more than forty years later is like inhaling a lungful of secondhand pot: a mildly stimulating diversion at best, but high times to an old square like me.

It would take a more generous pair of ears to award "Paradieswärts Düül" anything more than three solid stars (for the music alone...give the album five stars for the integrity of its hippie idealism). And while it certainly casts a unique and peculiar spell, I'm not really tempted to explore any deeper into the anarchic rituals of earlier Amon Düül albums like the notorious 1969 freak out of "Psychedelic Underground". Pardon the lousy pun, but I think I'll quit while I'm a Head.

Jeez! This really is poor. Much worse than I remembered. A shockingly stark, poorly produced, rambling mess of an album that holds no coherence whatsoever. Recorded by a bunch of drug addled stoners who could barely lift a fag to their mouths. They're as sharp as a pound of wet liver.

'Collapsing' is the name this album deserves. It's clearly a jam by a bunch of layabouts who clearly couldn't give a monkeys about how the final cut would end up sounding. Give me one person... just one... who says this is a masterpiece and I'll shake them by the hand (or throat).

An album without one redeeming quality whatsoever. Even the junkies in the background can't shake their bloody bangles in time with the out of time bongos!

When they finally realise that things are falling apart at the seems we get tape cuts of noise in an attempt to cover the ineptitude. These splices are the the best parts of the album... .

Life's too short to lisen to this rubbish

The 8 mentioned minutes have the appearance of a song and when it becomes psychedelic for few seconds one could think that something good is coming. Unfortunately it falls back into the first album's poor recording (and poor writing, too). The untuned 12 strings guitar and the hippy/acid percussions don't enhance this monotonal song. Well, if you are around a fire with stoned friends smoking everything passes through your fingers it can sound good, but "the times ar ea-changed". this music is flat and repetitive. So repetitive to be hypnotic and this is probably its purpose. At least is better recorded and less chaotically improvised than the debut, that's the only other Amon Duul album that I know. "Peace, brothers".

"Snow Your Thirst and Sun Your Open Mouth" is a bit better. Bass and guitar are again repetitive, but it's seems that they have written something. This is not a bad track, even if I still can't understand where the 12 elements credited in this album are, or how many of them were awaken while the session was being recorded. What we have is two different tracks, really, as the second half is occupied by a guy trying to tune his guitar with the bass....at least this is what it seems.

A great new on the last track: two chords instead of one. This is a big enhancement in the songwriting. I know that tuning a 12 strings guitar is not very easy, but there's people able to do it, so why playing in this way on an album? I have to say that this is the thing with more similarities with music that can be found on this album, and this is really an enhancemnt respect to the debut that didn't contain anything of this kind.

I'm undecided between 1 and 2 stars, but being it not as bad as the debut so it can have two. Only for fans, if any.

Having said this, I guess that there little to be added. This band continues to "offer" the same noisy, fully jam-oriented stuff (can't call this music really). The sound is awful (not even of decent boot quality), the "tracks" are totally uninspired, lousy and quite dispensable.

I was a bit less harsh with their "Paradieswarts Duul" (two stars), but even this one was no big deal. But this one is probably the "climax" of all their albums so far. And it is a double one! Can you imagine the pain to endure? For about seventy minutes of this treat is quite a hard exercise.

Is there a track worth mentioning? Huuumm: I don't think so. Maybe under influence, but even so I am not sure that something would stand out from this "Disaster".

After a super dull "Broken", I can cope for a while with "Somnium" (but not for too long to be honest). It is probably the most digestible track of all featured here. If you would like to torture yourself, you can listen to this double album but you have been warned.

One star of course.

The "epic" opener is just a seventeen minutes poor piece of music (?). It is a mix of acoustic guitar and repetitive riff with poor vocals that lead to a total chaos again. As usual should I say. To be totally fair (as I have always tried to be), I have to recognize that the second track "Snow Your Thurst & Sun Your Open Mouth" is quite decent and acceptable.

Totally hypnotic and repetitive it is the best (?) piece of music featured by this band so far in their career as far as I am concerned. It is fully psychedelic and the ones who like the early live Floyd appearances should like this track.

Some might feel great while listening to "Paramechanische Welt", but I can't. To my ears, it is just another long and dull track. Some decent percussion are present, but it features weak acoustic guitar background and poor vocals as well. What else?

Well, some average psyche song actually; under the form of "Eternal Flow". Sure that those guys must have been pretty loaded to generate such a track (which is a bonus on the CD version).

At the end of the day, this album is better than their debut but I can't be laudatory about such a work. But maybe is this what's Kraut is all about.

Two stars.

Just try and listen to the whole "Ein wunderhubsches Madchen Traumt von Sandosa" (even the title of this song is quite an article on its own).

The sound which has to be endured during this seventeen minutes "epic" is even more garage oriented than most punk bands have ever produced. This is a total disaster: a huge waste of time to listen to this sort of track (let's be honest: one can't talk about music here). I was sooooo happy when this joke came to an end.

Each of the qualities mentioned above also applies to the short "Kaskados Minnelied". One chord wonder (?); but without the guts of the later "Adverts".

To listen to this album in a row is a nice little nightmare. Should I recommend trying and enduring this? Or just tell you to run away as fast as you can? I guess that the second option is the only choice. When I will add that the sound is awful, is there one SINGLE reason to like this album?

IMHHO: no. Not a single one. Unless being under "influence". But then seriously. Hype and joke: yes! Star rating: one. Overall feeling: ugly and repetitive to death. Gosh!

A definite 'love it or hate it' album for most folk.

There's not much in the way of music going on. Somebody unwisely handed out a few sets of bongos and guitars to these guys without realising what the repercussions would be. There's a few cut up tapes thrown in willy nilly which contributes to the oddness of this album. You could be mistaken for thinking that you're hearing the 'Bismarck' docking at Kiel.

Honestly... 'Psychedelic Underground' sounds like a cow in labour. You're ears will be melted off by this buttock clenching squonck fest. The palms of my hands were bleeding by the time I got through this - after my fists clenched tighter and tighter until my knuckles were a shade of ghastly white...

And yet... Each time I hear this album something new pops out. Amidst the dodgy production and lack of musicianship, there's something that clicks. Something tribal, something pure, something beautiful in the ugliest of ways.

Close to a 4 star - but reason dictates a 3.

Things are a little better with the second track that has an indian flavour. Good enough to trip on it, but no more than this. The third is like an appendix of the first. There was probably more in the band's intentions, but the recording is so poor that I can just appreciate the repetitions.

The following track is a "rocky" sequence of 8 notes over which what seems to be a cello makes some noise. This track is hypnotic enough and reminds me to the quite unknown album of the Japaneses Kharuna Kyal. Track 5 starts as a follow-up to the previous one, but it's quiter, based on a string instrument that seems an acoustic guitar played with a pencil on the strings and on weird vocalisms. This second hal of the album is a little better than the first. In particular this track is spacey.

The last track is quite similar to the first but it's only 2:30 minutes long. It seems that the production has been enhanced on the last two tracks or it's only that my ears are now used with it.

The second side is not enough to save this album even if surely better than the first. This is just for hard lovers of the genre, and mainly as a document as there's very few to enjoy here

The album contains six tracks. All repetitive, rather noisy at times and badly produced songs. I can think of a lot of other krautrock albums that I would recommend listening to before this one. The songs simply go nowhere IMO. Jamming and psychadelic but not very interesting. The playing is sloppy and if you ask me it´s a stretch to call it adventurous even though it´s certainly unconventional.

This is the kind of album that serves best as a historical document and not really for listening pleasure. At least I have a very hard time getting any kind of enjoyment out of listening to the album. If you´re interested in the earliest origins of krautrock this might suit your taste though. I refuse to give Psychedelic Underground more than a 1 star rating, first of all because I can´t stand listening to it but also because of the sub par musicianship and the awful and noisy production. Enter at your own risk.