WOLF CITY

A five star rating for sure is something that should be considered well before being given to any album. Amon Düül II is an acquired taste, but once that far extremely rewarding. I noticed this on nearly all pre Hijack albums, but particularly on the ones where they started to change from more psychedelic stuff to more melodic and shorter songs. The two albums that I regard as belonging to that section are Viva la Trance (VLT) and Wolf City (WC), the latter being reviewed here. The first time I found out about ADII I started listening to the early years stuff, for sure also containing a number of masterpieces. Of course, once the ADII infection hits your mind, all other stuff must be explored as soon as possible. Being used to the old stuff, VLT and WC were a little disappointing at first. Too simple at first glance, not really intellectually and musically challenging. "At first glance", that's the key word and where the fifth star in this review is being given for.

What ADII always have been masters in is giving you the impression to have been saddled up with some nice flickering pieces of coloured glass at first instance, while after having blinked a couple of times with your eyes you have to conclude that, instead of the worthless glass, you are actually looking at genuine diamonds. It really is true genius if you are able to make something so complex, professional and thought through at first glance appear to be so simple.

And probably even more genius, since I somehow have the impression that most of what ADII made was driven much more by feelings than by intellect. Until now intellect has never been able to in the core translate feeling and giving overweight to feelings when it comes to taking decisions (how to sculpt your music) also takes a lot of guts, since you can't translate that in something you can easily communicate and discuss with other people. Perhaps that's also why their music and this album particularly is so basically original.

Wolf City generally is reviewed with 4 stars, indicating that most people reviewing it have seen the importance of it. If you are really into ADII, there is no other way then to give this album a minimum of 4 stars, less than that simpy means that you haven't given it the time to start blooming.

I will not review all songs here seperately, since a lot of other reviewers already did this, but I have to say that I fully agree with a lot of other people that Sleepwalker's timeless bridge is an epic all time master piece of music. (Tip for people liking this song, try to listen once to the relatively unknown song "Lemmingmania")