PARADIESWÄRTS DÜÜL

Amon Duul could only have happened in a certain time and place. This is, of course, the only bona fide studio album released by Amon Duul, and I have to say it is an absolute gem. The Repertoire Records edition is superlative - the clarity and warmth of the sound is impeccable, and the two bonus tracks are not only brilliant in their own right, but actually improve the structure of the CD.

'Para Dieswarts Duul' does not need to be sliced into tracks. Even though there are actually plenty of small musical shifts within each song - washes of synthesiser, key changes, vocals floating in and out of harmonies - it doesn't seem so at all. It seems like it's all one song.- one constant, flowing synthesis of sparse and delicate guitar lines, with keyboards and vocals and flutes and bongos occasionally stepping into focus for a while before vanishing back into the central piece. These five songs knitted together as an album present a wonderfully seamless statement of intent, even if the tone of one piece clashes with another (for example, the opening odyssey 'Love Is Peace' is warm and dreamily fun, whereas the closing 'Paramechanical World' - a bonus track - is spare and mournful, even hopeless).

Unlike the other Amon Duul albums, which are all taken from the same monster jam session in 1969, it is unclear exactly how much of this is improvised. I suspect 'Snow Your Thirst...' is, as it ends with a hard cut, but the rest of the album is teetering gloriously between the composed and the telepathised. It rhythmically feels its way forward, rarely breaking the pulse through its entire duration.

And strangely, that's all I can remember about it. 'Para Dieswarts Duul' is the ultimate background music, and is as successful in sending me to sleep as it is in enthralling me, drawing me into the swaying rhythms and the wonderful kosmische sirenism vocals. It is a very special album indeed, comparable to much of the rest of the Krautrock cannon in the same way that 'Islands' compares to the rest of King Crimson's music: A beautiful oddity.

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