L.S. BEARFORCE

3.5 stars. L.S. BEARFORCE was the project of one Lothar Schmidt, with the L.S. being his initials. He was a drummer who loved GURU GURU, obviously because of the great Mani Neumeier. So imagine his excitement when he actually gets to play with Mani who is on this record. But it doesn't end there, as he also enlisted drummer Winfried Beck who adds drums and congas. Lothar himself plays bass on here. He's actually quite good, as he always used the bass to compose songs in the past.

The legendary Edgar Hofmann from EMBRYO adds sax, nagaswaram, flute and violin. And we get a guitarist I don't know in Edmund Heimann. Now this was the early 80's when Krautrock was a decade removed from it's peak. And this is a rare album from this time to actually play in the classic early 70's style. A poor man's GURU GURU is how I would put it. It's coming up 7 years since I last spent some time with this one. And originally I gave it 4 stars, but have since dropped it to 3 stars. I feared I got caught up in the lineup here, and in the fact this was released the early eighties and how this must have been a Godsend to old school Krautrock fans. But honestly it's too much like GURU GURU's classic period, but not nearly on that level.

A band who were their contemporaries was SPACEBOX who were led by GURU GURU's original bass player Ule Trepte. These two bands shared three members in Hofmann, Neumeier and Heimann. SPACEBOX though was about as far from GURU GURU sounding as you can get. Almost an avant style that is very experimental. Difficult is the word. Uli actually did the cover art for this one, I believe an artistic LS is what he drew. So a pretty good album where they seem to jam a lot, but like the two SPACEBOX records, this feels sub par compared to the classics.