HAIRY CHAPTER

This is adventerous and they've brought in some guests this time around. A second drummer who is on the opener only, a harmonica/bongo player, a double bass man besides their own bass player, and a trumpet player. The trumpet man was over 50 years old and looks so out of place with these hippies. Not big on his contribution either on that one track sounding like he's playing on the TV series Zorro. Dieter Dierks engineered and produced this album and composed the closer. He knew these guys were special but the singer is probably the wild card for most. I love the character of his voice and how theatrical he gets. No keyboards here.

"There's A Kind Of Nothing" opens with a lot of fire power. This guitarist is a light show but to start we get a lot of distortion before he changes to a cleaner sound. The vocals and guitar trade off which sounds so cool. We get pretty much silence half way through then double bass before it builds kicking back in late. "Can't Get Enough" has a lot of energy as the vocals and guitar cry out. Harmonica after 1 1/2 minutes as the vocals step aside. The vocals and guitar are amazing on this almost 11 minute track.

"It Must be An Officer's Daughter" is something. An 8 minute tour de force where lust rears it's ugly head and the band go into that dark mode with creepy vocals. They slow it down but it remains powerful and check out that pure emotion starting around 3 1/2 minutes. The bass is incredible here as the guitar lays waste all else. "As We Crossed Over" is almost folky with strummed guitar and more relaxed singing. My least favourite. The closer opens with them sounding like they warming up for a minute before suddenly the metal is flying. Vocals follow as it picks up.

A very solid 4 stars in my world.

HAIRY CHAPTER, however, exists on the extreme other side of the equation. If I didn't know going in that these guys were psychedelic Germans, I'd have sworn that I was listening to some good ol' Texas boys who discovered acid while on a football scholarship to Grand Funk U. This is the rare prog that goes as well with cheap beer and tinkering with your muscle car as it does with some sugarcubes and a light show.

Don't get me wrong, it's not great...except that it really is. It's not unique...except that it really is. It's not challenging, but brother, is it challenging. At the heart of the paradox that is HARRY CHAPTER is a willingness among the audience to suspend a certain amount of musical disbelief, perhaps in a completely different direction that one's mind is accustomed to opening.

Predictably, most 'technical' prog fans will hate it and even the more lysergically tolerant psych fans will regard it as an acquired taste. Art rock and RIO fans will probably not even deign to let their multicolored llama urinate on it (upside down, of course). But if you want to get Dazed and Confused Linklater-style, "Can't Get Through" will get your shirt off and your sideburns bouncing like no other.

I fished this out of a cupboard that holds cd's that I wished I'd never bought and guess what? 10 years later I still regret it. What a bunch of kak.

This is one of the most miserable, derivative middle of the road albums I've ever heard. It's God awful. How on earth this ended up on the otherwise brilliant 'Nurse With Wound' list I'll never know. It's without doubt the worst album I've reviewed on the Prog Archives. It just makes my blood boil with annoyance.

We've got some German guy singing in English over some pretty horrendous raw electric guitar, combined with some real dull bass work and seriously uninspired drums coupled with some atrocious tunes. Gaaaahh! I can't take any more. This is even worse than 'Kalacakra's' abominable 'Crawling To Lhasa'. Easily the worst Krautrock album I've heard.

It's not going back in the cupboard folks, this is going straight in the bin!