UTOPIA

Utopia is an excellent side project by some Amon Düül II members. The reissue credits the album to Amon Düül II though it was originally released by the title "Utopia" only. The first track is "What You Gonna Do?". It's a nice track sung by Renate, starting like a conventional rock song that turns into a jam. The second track "The Wolfman Jack Show" seems to be influenced by the Beatles song "Come Together", featuring saxophones and stuff. The third track is a beautiful satire song "Alice (O.P.)" played with piano.

"Las Vegas (O.P.)" is a jazzy track featuring again saxophone(s). "Deutsch Nepal" is a great powerful track and features a speech by "a german politician". Very futuristic sound! "Utopia No. 1" is a kind of "futuristic" revisit to "Las Vegas (O.P.)".

"Nasi Göring/Goreng" is my favourite track and seems like something from the movie "Clockwork Orange". It's an amazing composition, really excellent track. The last track on the original album was "Jazz Kiste(1)" which is a strange sounding jazzy track.

I have the year 2000 reissue of the album by Bell Musik, in which the three original bonus track are now companied with three new bonus tracks. On the first reissues of the album there was an error with "wrong" bonus tracks.The original bonus tracks seem now be the "correct ones", so they really are the tracks noted in the sleeve. Track no. 10 is however "Dancing On Fire" on this reissue. "Surrounded By The Stars" is an excellent powerful track with heavy drumming sound. "Dancing On Fire" is a funny dance track. "Deutch Nepal/Rolf Zacher Voc" is a different version of "Deutch Nepal" featuring Rolf Zacher in vocals as obvious.

"Goldrush" features exciting violin sound that makes an "eastern feel" to it. "Star Eyed" reminds some old german pop tune from the "old days" but with "rock flavour". "Dr. Stein" is a cathy whistling song.

I received this album a few weeks ago and I seem to like it more every time I listen it. It has a very futuristic (or utopian?) feel to it on many tracks. All in all, this is an excellent album.