HINTEN

Without a question GURU GURU were one of Germany's all time freakiest acid progressive rock bands to have existed. If you are looking for a relaxing album to chill out to then "Hinten" is definitely not the thing you should be looking for.. Listening to "Hinten" is sure way to raise your blood pressure with GURU GURU's patented acid laced-fuzzed out guitar solos and space interludes. For those who could lean of the heavier side of AGITATION FREE will definitely love GURU GURU's "Hinten" which very much reminds me of HENDRIX if he had enjoyed space travel.

Second album from this groundbreaking group, this album is almost better known for its buttocks artwork than the wild music on the vinyl. The almost instrumental trio (drummer Neumeier struts out some weird vocals once in a blue moon) is still just as crazy and free from all commercial considerations, and even if the music on the album has not aged well, the album's historical worth is certainly indisputable and the Konrad Plank production and its release on the legendary Ohr label adds even more to its legend .

This is more of a free jam with four tracks all around the 10min+ mark that have no real structure or constraint or restrictions (except the one of not having any ;-), so a good bunch of progheads will most likely frown at this album the ones that bookend it. But the double guru chose theirs and they clearly announce the colour by flashing their guitar power trio based on its ultimate form: the Jimi Hendrix Experience. But overall compared to their UFO debut album, this album is more structured (if you can call it that ;-), a tad less anarchic and a bit calmer. But don't be fooled: this still complete and utter chaos. YUMMMY!!!!!!!

Electric Junk (rather aptly titled is always on the verge of complete chaos while coming from pure mystic Hendrix-esque moments to a free jazz and utter spacey nightmares with feedbacks included. A pure joy to hear, if you ask me. And this apocalyptic atmosphere is only after the first track, and there are three left, so you'd better attach the safety belt and ask your buddies fasten the strap of your loony bin costume, cos you're in for a completely mind-boggling ride, starting with the meaningful Meaning Of Meaning. This 12-min freak out is probably one of the best examples to show what kind of freedom Guru Guru enjoyed during that blessed period of the very early 70's. with even less of a structure (if you except Mani Neumeier's incredible drum works) Genrish is free to go explore what good ol'Jimi was out to explore in some of his wildest jams.

On the next slice, the group visits another black guitar rock legend, Bo Diddley, and pay him an incredible tribute, even if I always wondered how the old master appreciated his works being trampled destroyed and rebuilt, not always successfully either, as this track is maybe the slightly weaker one, because there some evident lengths. The closing Spaceships starts out understandably on spacey sounds, which can be closer to Popol Vuh's Affenstunde or TD's Zeit period, even if they remained the guitar trio without synths or other keyboards. Rather impressive, slightly fascinating but definitely not for the faint-hearted.

Yes this album is clearly indebted to the great Jimi, but it is also a bit more than a glaring and blatant copy. One of those absolute statement on musical freedom, this is the type of album that had most parents and grandparents heaving in anguish for their offspring's sanity. And little did they know that they were fully right to be concerned, because no kid listening to this album would come out fully unscathed. All hail to the double Guru.

With its usual bass/drums/guitar parts, Guru Guru plays a trippy blues-kraut jamming. It's mostly instrumental and improvised with very original rhythmic and lead guitar sections, sometimes interrupted by monologues in German and strange screaming vocals. The last track contains a lot of psychedelic effects thanks to electronic gadgets.This album is a great answer to the English heavy and blues rock scene led by The Cream and others but really more outrageous and exciting. In the band's career, this album is in the direct line of their first effort UFO, a total free form rock with delicate psychedelic touches. Guru Guru representative style at his summit.

On the second album GURU GURU repeated the sound and style from their crazy debut, but the formula does not produce the same results on "Hinten". Again, this is an extremely challenging listening experience, which lack some freshness and originality of "UFO". Therefore, for me this is a negligable album, unless you are a fan or just love this type of noisy, acid and aimless improvisation.

Guru Guru. I LOVE Guru Guru. I'm probably not the right person to refer to, but most of their albums I would rate as 4's or 5's. This one is a 4.5 coz the next one is better. Hinten may not offer anything revolutionary, but their passion and vibrant energy levels surpasses that of many other bands. I'm not a fan of Hendrix, I couldn't even hum any tune by him (banished.... oh, maybe 'Are You Experienced ? - but that's thanks to the Magic Mushroom Band's cover of it ) but if any Hendrix is like this, I'd like to know, as JH is often cited as a reference point for this model Guru Guru. From the opening blast of 'Electric Junk' (10.58), the musicians waste not a second ; abrasive guitaring and heavy drumming instantly smashing your ears like a jack-hammer to a sidewalk - from this cacophonous intro the main riff kicks in (yes, Hinten is more riff laden than their debut, U.F.O.) with a rockabilly guitar on crystal, relentless in execution and complimented with Mani's incredibly creative and meticulous drum-work - even though their music is highly improvised, it's as if every part of the drum-kit he hits was carefully planned in advance. Bassist Uli Trepte underpins this madness with solid grooves, simple maybe, but methinks his Bass is the anchor for all the percussion and guitar histrionics. There are no keyboards, but there is an interlude that must've been snatched from a galaxy far, far away because it's really 'out there'. Who needs drugs when we have Guru Guru ??? The last section of this piece jams out with guitarist Ax Genrich sounding like he's been doused in fuel and set alight, Mani's rumbling, double-kick drumming powerful enough the crack the foundations of your humble abode, and Uli's orange Fender P-Bass keeping it all together. Great stuff to crank up first thing in the morning !! Similar descriptions can be applicable for the remaining 3 tunes as well, as Ax, Mani and Uli jumped on this formula of shredding, lysergically aided jams and got away with it. They refined this approach for the masterpiece album 'Kanguru'. James Blunt, anyone ??? - Didn't think so.....

I for one feel that GURU GURU's first three albums are essential for Krautrock fans. Oh the album cover is one of a kind. It's a picture of some guys backside with the words "Guru Guru" painted across his ass. And believe me there's no doubt it's a guy. My God ! What were they thinking ! Haha. Conny plank is on board working his magic as the engineer.

"Electric Junk" goes from freaky to heavy fairly quickly as Mani says "Electric junk". Nice bass and drum work as the guitar plays over top. Chaos 2 1/2 minutes in then it settles right down as spoken words come in. It kicks back in around 4 minutes but it's not as heavy as earlier, although I love the guitar. It calms down again before 7 minutes and is very psychedelic. It kicks back in before 9 minutes. Now this is heavy. "The Meaning Of Meaning" is psychedelic and spaced out early until drums, bass and guitar start to lead the way out of Loonyville after 2 minutes. Amazing sound here. Vocals after 4 minutes and it's building a minute later as the guitar lights it up. It settles after 7 minutes but not for long. Incredible track ! The guitar is just ripping it up 11 minutes in.

"Bo Diddley" starts with outbursts of instrumental music with Mani shouting "Bo Diddley" each time. It then settles into a great groove. I'm trippin'. Can't get enough of this as they just jam. Mani shouts out "Bo Diddley" a couple of more times. It speeds up after 9 minutes to the end. "Space Ship" is certainly spacey to open. A beat comes in after 2 minutes. A great sound follows as guitar and bass join in. It then turns spacey and psychedelic as the beat stops. After 7 minutes the drums, bass and guitar return and it's building. A powerful soundscape comes in before 9 minutes and swallows up the guitar, bass and drums, and it continues to be spacey to the end.

This is one of those albums I get excited about playing. Classic Krautrock !

"Hinten" is the sophomore album by Guru Guru which effectively confirms this power trio as a crucial item for the development of the krautrock movement that by 1971 had already become a melting pot of various sonic offerings converging on a common purpose of augmenting the language of rock and creating a peculiar edge to the avant-garde ideals that were being instilled in popular culture. This album is also famous (and infamous) for the cover photograph: a not too athletic male behind bearing a coarse tattoo that spreads on both buttocks. Well, the idea is clear in its intention to go against the two most recurrent trends in rock album sleeves: either a display of psychedelic figures based on a Modernistic approach or a manifestation of fantastic landscapes and characters where Surrealism and Romanticism unite. Not on this album sleeve, just that "lovingly" ugly image that I've already described and never will describe again. As for the music itself, there is a noticeable contrast between the straightforward atrocity in the cover and the refinement developed as an evolution from the dominantly chaotic ventures in the debut album "UFO". At this point, I must explain the same nuance that many other reviewers before me have done here in PA and other sources: the band maintains its original doses of energy and bizarreness, but in "Hinten", those unequivocal features are handled within a more focused dimension. Indeed, the sound of Mani's drumming happens to be more highlighted in the mix, which means that the band's explorations on free-form psychedelic and experimental jazz-rock give more room to the rhythmic architecture and subsequent variations to show off its inputs to the overall sound. Now, Guru Guru was a paradigmatic power trio in their first three albums, with both "Hinten" and "KänGuru" serving as the ultimate manifestations of this factor. The album kicks off with a Guru Guru undisputed classic, 'Electric Junk'. It starts with a Ten Years After sort of jam, high-spirited and happy-go-lucky, but it won't be long before this rock'n'roll party shifts toward a chaotic display (inc. a drum solo), which in itself is a transition to a different jam, heavier and denser, the track's main body. The Hendrix element that was also influential in Ash Ra Tempel and the electric climaxes of Amon Duul II can be spotted here as well, beyond doubt. 'The Meaning of Meaning' is next, in many ways perpetuating the prior piece's robust framework, but the slower tempo makes up the basis for a more constrained mood. After the 7 minute mark, a tribal drumming resource gets in so the whole band can shift to the track's second section: from the very beginning, it is quite clear that this section is aiming toward the ultimate climax, and indeed, the clever use of gradual intensity does not kill the sense of structure that prevails in the jam's foundation, but man, how wild this is... climatic and significant for all that the rock side of krautrock is about. The album's second half begins with another unquestionable Guru Guru classic ? 'Bo Diddley'. The Hendrixian guitar deliveries and Mani's ever-wild rhythmic demonstrations create a brotherhood of power to which the bass player adds electrifying cadences and sinister textures. 'Space Ship' occupies the album's last 11 minutes, managing to elaborate a superb culmination to it. A monotonous, sharp jam emerges in the first place as if portraying the mystery of otherworldly machineries, ultimately flowing into a disjointed exhibition of psychedelic chaos, very much "Ummagumma"-esque. A few seconds before the 7 minute mark, a new motif starts to build up slowly, which turns out to be a solid yet brief exercise on heavy progressive sonorities. Arguably, here we find the best gitar phrases in the whole album. At the 9 minute mark, the disjointed logic returns, excitingly enriched with reverse tape tricks: these last moments fulfill the very personification of cosmic madness. So, all in all, here is yet another brilliant rock monument that fully justifies Guru Guru's good name in the history of 70's experimental rock (krautrock and others).

Hinten is one of Guru Guru's most consistent efforts and easily my favorite of the band. It's a perfection of the debut, with the same freshness and inspiration but with a better sound and a sharper focus during the jams. It sits chronologically between UFO and Känguru and also musically it takes a position inbetween the total freedom of the debut and the more structured and catchy improvisations of Känguru

All tracks have a loose rocking structure, with loads of soaring guitars, tons of imagination, a healthy bit of madness, and an overdose of hash. The music may be quite out there but the musicianship of all members is stunning. Obviously, I'm a total fan-boy of Mani's drumming and of Ax Genrich's raw and fuzzy guitars, but also Uli Trepte on the bass should not be overlooked. With Mani's loose improvisational drum style, Uli is the one who's tying everything together with his tight bass grooves.

Guru Guru never delivered a better take of their Jimi Hendrix inspired jam freak-outs, and I would promote this album as a fine and fairly accessible introduction to Krautrock. But strangely, that's not what the average rating says. 4.5 stars for sure.

A more focused but still challenging listening experience, Guru Guru's second album still just doesn't do that much for me. Attempts at whimsicality (like the lyrics, such as they are, on Bo Diddley) just come across as annoying, the guitar sound is loud and abrasive without quite capturing the passion or intensity of other artists working in a similar vein, and whilst the jams have a bit more direction the album seems rooted in a psychedelic freakout approach which most other Krautrock groups had already evolved beyond by this point. I cannot, on the whole, recommend the album unless you're particularly fond of such albums; even then, there are better freakout discs out there.

If you first heard Guru Guru through the fusion-aimed DANCE OF THE FLAMES and went into this album in straight succesion like I did, the differences in sound are beyond noticeable. It's almost as if you listened to two different bands. HINTEN is anything but normal, anything but sane, and only those up for the challenge should listen, but that's where the appeal lies strange enough.

The whole thing is drenched with rich psychedelic jamming that generally goes into double digit territory. The band pulls in a tight, hard sound that in tracks like ''Electric Funk'', grab your attention right away or possibly keep it like on ''Bo Diddley''. In major contrast, the other two jams border on abstract, avant-garde psych rock with little semblance of structure. Nobody in the melody-loving camp is going to want to touch HINTEN with a ten foot pole, so this is for the adventurous or those that can get mesmerised by this type of stuff. Add in the occasional vocals of one Mani Neumeier who sounds like the leader of the Monty Python Gumbys, and this is pure joy for jam, Krautrock and space rock enthusiasts.

The butt-ugly cover of Guru Guru's sophomore album is entirely appropriate: this is the ass-end of classic Krautrock, slightly more refined than the band's earlier "UFO" but no less primitive in its unclothed, lo-fi squalor. The raw garage band sound was deliberate, and it fits. Engineer/ producer/ Krautrock guru Conny Plank always tailored his method to fit the music instead of the other way around, and the music of early Guru Guru was a lot closer to earth than the Kosmische Rock of other German bands at the time.

Symphonic-minded Progheads should therefore take heed. This album is so unpolished it could easily be mistaken for a loose clump of musical dirt, instead of the diamond-in-the-rough it actually is. But there's a crude playfulness here too, as the unflattering cover art makes all-too explicitly clear. I suppose when you're fighting The Establishment using radical politics, psychedelic drugs, and over-amped guitar feedback, it helps to also have a sense of humor.

And the trio was beginning to listen to each other, allowing a little more light and air into their music. The Jimi Hendrix influence is strongest in the perfectly-titled album opener "Electric Junk", albeit strangely skewed when filtered through the usual cross-cultural Krautrock translation. But the soundstage widens considerably for "The Meaning of Meaning", a slowburn freak-fest showpiece for guitarist Ax Genrich. Ditto "Bo Diddley", in which the band gets downright goofy. Is that Mani Neumeier himself, shouting out the name of the legendary R&B pioneer in a succession of Monty Python-like voices? (The credits include "Sounding Being" and "Zonk Machine" among his other esoteric instruments.)

Needless to say, it's a long way from anything resembling musical sophistication. But the album was still miles ahead of the band's 1970 debut. And today it remains a valuable artifact from the Stone Age (pun intended) of power rock rebellion.

In hindsight - pun intended - this is perhaps the best acid-rock album by German krautrock group Guru Guru. Though this album is probably one improvised affair, it still reaches depth when it comes to exploring the (tape- manipulated) electric wah wah guitar. Needles to say Jimi Hendrix is the main inspiration here, but the music hardly evokes that soul-infused rock style of the sixties. In stead 'Hinten' evokes that psychedelic krautrock feel with hints of early doom influences from Black Sabbath and the wild early hardrock of MC5 . The album also reminds me a bit of The Human Beast, a rarity fans of this album should look for. The recording sound is quite superior to the especially rough debut album of the band ('UFO', 1970) and the stereo effects add to the spaciousness of the music. The heavy distorted guitar of Ax Genrich is the main attraction, but in the rhythm section the drums of Mani Neumeier are starting to show his tremendous talent. On 'Hinten' the band introduces more composed parts, but the largely structured riffing of follow-up 'Kanguru' is still quite far away. Whereas that record would have a brilliant second side, 'Hinten' is actually quite balanced and enjoyable from start to finish. It does sound like a lot of the same at first spin, but when it grows on you the way of thinking and distinct creativity of this record starts to reveal itself. The last track 'Space Ship' is a track in which the band expands on its use of delays, 'out there' vocals and tape manipulations. It could therefor attract some Hawkwind listeners and space rock fans in general. In conclusion, this is a well-recorded acid-rock & krautrock gem that can't be bested in what it does.

Cool bluesy psychedelic rock structure blended with electronic junky fuel. Sounds like their second album "Hinten", despite such a nasty jokey sleeve pic, should be filled up with everything they want to do and want to provide for the audience. This crazy musical structure gets more and more attractive than their brilliant debut creation "UFO" and drives us into another dimension. Impressive and innovative is the combination of sticky, complicated drone electronic agents and funky, freaky, simple rock perspectives. We can feel their massive tolerance for Krautrock that broadens the outlooks of German young generations. And at the same time they straightly launch their big respect for the rock pioneer ... The third track "Bo Diddley" is full of their positive mindset for blues rock. Not so complex nor weird for Krautrock the song is, but colourful sound variations and deep heavy musical development can be heard. Simplicity is also good.

And do not forget they definitely play with much pleasure and enjoyment here and there. The former part of the second one "The Meaning Of Meaning" possesses kinda quite lazy dazy dizzy lizzy atmosphere but in such a sound- polluted air we can find apparent innocence and amusement via their play. And the latter throws us heavy deepy shoegaze-y composition and dark-guitar-based psychedelic vertigo. Of course the rhythm bases strictly support the background. The epilogue "Space Ship" is another perfect space rock featuring drone electronica and improvised guitar discharge. Dynamic, serious, sticky, repetitive sound potential and the very last electronic madness should take the audience into dreamy inorganic space. What a hell.

But I consider that their real masterpiece is the first bullet "Electric Junk", that involves quite magnificent electric (guitar) energy and impressive rhythmic position. Only a few phrases in the beginning of this song have enough power and energy to kick our b**t strongly and to notify us they are really cool. The middle wondrous slowertempo steadiness is also tremendous. And the final run with uptempo dignified rock rigidity encourages us. No suspicion we can notice their innovative soundscape should be sorta vanguard in the early German Psychedelic Rock Scene.