BEE AS SUCH [AKA: DÜÜLIRIUM]

I have for long toyed around with the idea of reviewing this. There are some good reviews around already that give you an impression of the ambiguity one can feel when listening to this, and ultimately I can see how one can love or hate this, but most seem to go in the middle of the rating range for its obvious qualities and drawbacks.

On the positive side, this is a very fresh, creative, and original album. Much of it is improvised. The last track is probably a fully free improvisation whereas the first three have some composition but are performed in a very free way. This is not nostalgic in the least, it has its very own character that uses some modern elements and sounds while at the same time pointing to the free and somewhat naive nature of the earliest material of the band; it is also dominated by traditional electric guitar, bass and drums, if with some electronic additions. My two favourite tracks are the second and third one. "Du kommst ins Heim" means "You go to the care home" in a way that this could be said in an authoritative manner to an elderly person who has lost their marbles. The musicians were in their early sixties at the time when this was recorded, and I hope still in good shape, still I like them taking on this topic at advanced age, with some allusion to the fact that Amon Düül II have always been crazy and wild and were at the very least in the early days misunderstood and sniffed at by mainstream culture. This (and the whole album) is a clearly a statement that they don't plan to become civilised ever, and that there have been and will be voices telling them "Du kommst ins Heim" at any time of their career and surely still (or again) at old age. The music on this one is quite structureless and mostly improvised, very well fitting the theme of the track, with some crazy word play by Renate, who comes over on this album as even more crazy and witchy than ever, and Chris, who sticks to his well known smoky anti-singing. (Stay away from the album if you need beautiful voices and melodic in-tune singing - this is all about expression of moods and mostly probably better understood as artfully spoken text than singing!)

"Standing in the Shaddow" is what most resembles a rock song on the album with a very solid rhythmic spine, and traditional Amon Düülish bass and guitar. The beginning is composed, but it later devolves into another improvisation. It comes with some fun electronic noises adding to the rhythm that work very well. The first track "On the Highway" is something of a hymn to the freedom of expression and against narrow views, with which they were apparently confronted a lot. It's the track I like least on the album, because it is let down by very static drumming (there is some pretty good and some outright annoying drumming on this album - not sure why obviously existing ability was underused here) and it is quite repetitive - actually they are repetitive all over the place, which makes sense in an improvisation and can come with its own appeal - just on this track I don't think what they are repeating is that worthwhile.

The album ends with a 26 minutes improvisation Back to the Rules/Walking in the Park, which has its highs and lows. It starts off in a very subtle manner and has some nice free experimentation. It is pretty dynamic and varied; on the negative side I think that they devote some more time and repetition to less interesting parts, and some other parts would have deserved more focus.

It is half refreshing and half annoying to hear such a supposedly naive and direct approach of seasoned and experienced musicians. There are times when I totally love this, but at some other time I think "try harder"... devoting some more time and elaboration to this album could have improved a number of parts of the album, although they would probably have thought that it could have destroyed the spontaneous character of the album.

It takes some guts to come out with an album like this, and surely they always had them. Ultimately I'm happy that we have this. 11 years after this was recorded there is no sign of maybe another album coming (they were playing live as late as 2018 though), and if this will be their last album, they will have finished their discography with something unique and fresh. Fine by me. If I devote myself properly to listening and I'm in the right mood, I love it (or let's say most of it), but the provocatively amateurish character of some of this can annoy me at times. 3.4 stars.