AMMERLAND

This rare LP is made by 2 German musicians: a guitarist and a keyboardist. The style of this instrumental music is very varied: we can talk about a mix of progressive folk, New Age and an emulation of classical music.

There are omnipresent sophisticated acoustic guitars a la Steve Hackett, Anthony Phillips or Jan Akkerman, combined with tons of melodic and symphonic keyboards. there are no drums and the bass is rather rare on this record. There are many moog and floating mellotron parts: sometimes it sounds like Genesis' "Wind and wuthering", Focus and Vangelis. The sound is really pure and modern. The music is really well recorded, relaxing and beautiful. The ensemble is rather symphonic. The last track on side 1 is oddly strange: there is a man who expresses pathetic laughs and/or cries: this is the only weak point on this album.

Führs & Fröhling is but the simplistic name adopted by the duo of Gerhard Führs and Heinz Fröhling given the creation of a remnant act from Schicke, Führs & Fröhling (still active at the time, by the way). "Ammerland" is a beautiful album of melodic prog music, with a particular predominance of acoustic pieces (90% written by guitarists Fröhling) on a pastoral or classicist note. The presence of classical and acoustic guitars is heavily featured, being consistently in charge of elaborating the tracks' basic harmonies and main melodies; Führs, in turn, is mostly in charge of completing the melodic lines, state precise ornaments and layers convenient to either fulfill or enhance each current mood. This is mainly what happens in this album: using a symbolic image, picture Anthony Phillips travelling to Germany to record a sort of continuation of his "The Geese and the Ghost" album with back-up keyboardists from Eloy, Neuschwanstein or Novalis. There you have it then, or at least, something close. The namesake opener displays a magic majesty with those lovely classical guitar harmonies softly joined by eerie orchestrations on synths: it's a minstrel thing with an extra touch of soft, spacey undertones. 'Gentle breeze' portrays a similar melodic candor, but the lyrical momentum finds a somewhat tighter fruition due to the synth interventions; the track includes a mysterious interlude built around Renaissance times' spirit (Führs sounds a bit like Kit Watkins at times). 'Dance of the Leaves' is more frontally academic-oriented, much akin to Phillips' habitual pastoral side mixed with the bucolic side of Oldfield. The same goes for the Baroque 'Sarabande' and the romantic 'Circles of Live'. All three pieces fulfill a mixture of intimate classicism and clever keyboard textures (very German symphonic, indeed). Among them stands 'Street Dance', a fine exercise on playful Celtic moods, with certain nuances of urban folk. 'Every Land Tells a Story' is the longest track in the album, lasting almost 14 minutes - being a piece tried in SFF concerts, it is no surprise that the spirit of the trio is present in this epic, but the overall arrangements are evidently suited to the duo format. The opening motif is based on solid 12-string acoustic guitar arpeggios, with symphonic-spacey synth layers filling the mood; a second motif is more playful, quite close to some "Sunburst" tracks. At this point, there is also a connection with late 70s tangerine Dream. Before getting to minute 7, a piano motif emerges on a melancholic note, using empty spaces between chords quite effectively. With the addition of synths and picked guitar phrases, things get pompous in a controlled way. This very section is doubled after some cosmic effects (including an echoing thunder), enhancing the spacey facet until the final section nbrings an introspective ambience. Brilliant, really brilliant. The album's final 5 minutes are occupied by 'Ammernoon' (yet another track from the SFF days), which exhibits a mixture of TD and Cluster: the mysterious background includes whispers, moans and other vocal sources, while the mellotron and Moog provide a certain disturbance. "Ammerland" is a lovely album, certainly a demonstration of the sort of creativity that Führs and Fröhling had in store beside the SFF project.

There are two scenarios how the ''Ammerland'' album came up.First one says that Eduard Schicke had already parted ways with Fuehrs and Froehling, even if a third studio album by SFF had been recorded but not yet released.Second one appears Schicke to be still involved with SFF, but Fuehrs and Froehling had found time to create their own work in absence of drums and ''Ammerland'' was the fruit of their collaboration.One way or another this album marked the first effort of Fuehrs and Froehling as a duo, released in 1978 on Brain. Heinz Froehling appears to handle only acoustic/classical guitars, while Gerd Fuehrs plays Mellotron, Moog synth and grand piano.

As expected this work is quite different from the album of Fuehrs and Froehling with SFF, even if it has a strong symphonic flavor.Armored only with a guitar and some keyboards they leave SFF's powerful, symphonic textures for good to deliver dreamy, sensitive and very mellow instrumental music, which flirts with New Age and tends to be pretty minimalistic.First side actually sounds very one-dimensional, where the talent of Froehling is much highlighted and Fuehrs remaining in the background.So this is dedicated to classical guitar-drenched soundscapes with basically some nervous keyboard notes performed by Fuehrs.The exception comes from the short title-track, which contains some beautiful Mellotron waves next to atmospheric synths and the classical guitar alternating between cinematic and more sweet textures, while ''Circles'' has slightly more pronounced keyboard flavors in the vein of TONY BANKS, but even so it sounds pretty hypnotic.''Every land tells a story'' clocks at 14 minutes and seems to be not only the centerpiece of the flipside but of the whole album as well.This comes closer to SFF's classic works, switching from the melodic and ethereal lines to decent synth soloing and evident Classical vibes during the guitar parts, having a more balanced performance and sounding somewhere between SFF, MIKE OLDFIELD and STEVE HACKETT.The New Age atmosphere is still present and the absence of drums holds down the energy level, but this arrangement overall sounds charming and interesting.''Ammernoon'' will close the album in a spacey way with orchestral keyboards and cosmic synthesizers providing a not very familiar mood by Fuehrs and Froehling.

I would not recommend this work to fans of rich, progressive and intricate compositions, because it sounds rather hypnotic and extremely sophisticated.Basically the fan base should be New Age afficionados and lovers of minimalistic textures along the attempts of MIKE OLDFIELD.Rather dissapointing effort after the previous work of the duo with Schicke.