AUM

3.5 stars really!!

Deuter's second album is slightly different than his then-stunning debut, but by no means any less essential. Still working alone, this album is less electronics than its predecessor but still have many tape effects. The slide is noticeable towards a more New Age sound, but nothing that obvious either. No long tracks on this one, rather a succession of short tracks that still point towards early Popol Vuh or Tangerine Dream.

A second release done after further travelling out in the mid-east, his next album (from my information will not come until 76, but by that time Celebration (the album's name), the full- blown New Age sound is present. He will have a long career in that (rather vacuous, IMHO) style.

The second album by Deuter, Aum, sees the composer embracing influences from Indian music and incorporating them into a largely bland New Age framework. Penultimate track Susani is the odd man out here, exploring as it does dark ambient realms which remind me a little of some of Brian Eno's work later in the decade, but it's not quite enough to justify the tepid, featureless, uninspired material that surrounds it. Nor does Deuter's use of ideas from Indian music ever quite come across as authentic; in fact, it feels like a gimmick. The album isn't outright incompetent, but at the same time I can't strongly recommend it.

Georg Deuter is a German born instrumentalist who has released more than sixty albums to date since beginning his musical journey back at the start of the early Seventies. He is mostly associated with New Age and meditation music these days, but at the very start of his career, his first few releases were firmly in the Krautrock mold, where rough-around-the-edges ethnic instrumentation blended with organ, electronics and both electric and acoustic guitar passages. His classic 1971 debut `D' favoured lengthy psychedelic and avant-garde sound collages, whereas this follow up `Aum' a year later focused on a variety of shorter eastern-flavoured fragments (although the two sides of the vinyl run continuously together as suites of music) with strong world music elements. It's a different approach to his first disc, even holding a frequent dark ambience in several spots, yet it's no less captivating, and just as much a defining Krautrock work as that precious debut remains.

Opening with a storm crackle, `Phoenix' begins the first set with faraway acoustic strums, flighty recorder and field recordings of nature weaving together warmly, plodding bass and gentle percussion rising around eerie drones, groaning sitar, chant-like wavering voices and bubbling electronics. The second suite takes up the remaining first side, starting with maddening tribal-like drumming over a cold machine-like hum that turns oddly calming and soothing as it progresses, before moving through reverberating pristine slivers that pierce the air to finally culminate in grinding sitar strains.

`Soma' begins the third and final suite, taking up the entire twenty-one minute second side. Calming ocean waves lap behind spirited acoustic guitar ruminations, frantic driving percussion runs merge with droning electronics, pulsing bass and reaching electric guitar bursts weave through glacial ethereal hums. Crystalline chimes shimmer amongst rustling hand-percussion rapture until a final dance of sitar full of spiritual ecstasy brings the inner journey to a close.

Most of Deuter's Seventies and early Eighties albums would still offer intelligent and hypnotic compositions, but as that decade continued, he would gradually reign in the headier, lysergic Krautrock qualities, replacing them with calmer moods that would come to be associated with the then emerging New Age genre, even if they were still impeccably written and performed. But it's in these early works that the real magic remains, and with especially both `D' and `Aum' here, we experience a fractured glimpse of a thoughtful, inspired artist with a timeless musical vision.

Four stars.