GURU GURU

"GURU GURU were one of the wildest and most imaginative bands to emerge from the 1970`s Krautrock scene and gave definition to the term."

Not if you listen to this album from 1973 they weren't and didn't...

Fans of Krautrock or those curious to the genre are well advised to look elsewhere, as this offering from Guru Guru is neither wild nor imaginative, and certainly does not define Krautrock. If you want something that better fits this description, I would suggest Amon Duul II's "Phallus Dei".

"Samantha's Rabbit" comes across as a kind of heavy version of something from the "Piper At The Gates of Dawn" outtakes - something that PF might have considered but objected outright.

The Rocking Medley that follows smacks heavily of Spinal Tap - kind of progressive Rock and Roll, beginning with quotes from "Shaking All Over", then a high-adrenaline journey through rock and roll standards that wouldn't be out of place on a Ten Years After album with two major drawbacks; the absence of the brothers Lee. The upshot of this is that the drumming is uninspired and the guitar playing overly meandering, the whole descending into a somewhat lame wannabe Led Zep jam.

The production is great, so the bass particularly shines through nicely, the guitars have a good tone and the percussion is crisp... but it's all too crisp for real rock'n'roll - not nearly dirty enough. When it drops into Eddie Cochran's classic "Something Else", it's frankly embarrassing... and doesn't get better.

"Woman Drum" begins with something approaching the riff from "Sunshine of Your Love", then goes back into the rock'n'roll inspired sound... quite nasty really.

"Der Elektrolurch" begins promisingly enough and is closer to what I would expect from Krautrock - but it's taken an entire side to get here, so I'm not feeling generous. It soon becomes clear that we're back in jam territory again, but at least the rock'n'roll train wreck has been left behind. We move on a decade into something that could easily have come from a number of 1960's garage bands, with hints of popular R&B bands of the early 1960s. We finally kick into something interesting around 3:40 - but absolutely no fireworks and nothing "wild" or "imaginative" until around 5 minutes. Now we're starting to cook... but then the ideas run out and Guru Guru search for inspiration in "Astronomy Domine". Inspiration is not forthcoming, however...

"The Story Of Life" closes the album somewhat insipidly, but with more imagination than anything that has preceeded it. The sudden turn to something approaching fusion around 3:00 is nice, and demonstrates a good handle on the heavy "swing" jazz style it settles into, but GG get bored of it and fade into something approaching the "floating" section of "Echoes". Really, if you're going to plunder someone's style, you could at least do them the courtesy of acknowledging it on the album, or assimilating the style rather than lifting the music almost verbatim. When GG attempt to expand on this, it fails miserably and faffs around improvisationally for a while trying to find its feet. "Echoes" is plundered some more, and GG drag it out to reach the 12:06 mark...

Although there are a few "moments", Guru Guru is tedious and uninspired in general - and only worth the money if you simply must have everything by Guru Guru or are an avid Krautrock collector.

Avoid, or listen once if you don't believe me! There are plenty of great Krautrock albums out there and this is not one of them.

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