COLLAPSING - SINGVÖGEL RÜCKWÄRTS & CO.

This is a primitive, tribal psychedelic rock manifestation, continuously improvised, spontaneous and making a large place to acoustic, ritualistic percussions, agressive fuzzed out guitars. Tracks 2& 3 contain massive, obsessive, hammering drums exercices in ethnic folk, acid proportions, based on repetitive, endless motifs. Track 3 also features stoned, bizarre monotonous voices at the end. Track 4 is an original kraut improvisation, including dark drum experimentations, noises and violent bluesy rock guitars. Track 5 is a heavy psych piece, delivering an insistent rhythm and free chants. Track 6 is a folk trip song with a basic repetitive rhythm, almost unsignificant stoned voices in the distance and psych guitar harmonies. Track 7 includes an avalanche of ritual drums. Track 9 is a mechanical noisy experimentation with drums, concerte sounds and voices (the atmosphere is closed to cryptical stuffs written by the German avant garde band Anima). Certainly less refined than Amon Duul II but it contains a very catchy primitive energy. The contemplative, pastoral psych "Paradieswarts" remains the best part of these late 60's live sessions and among the best Amon Duul's materials. A very bad sound quality but it is an interesting release for krautrock collectors.

Though this album follows the style of the first recording of the gonzo jamming of this musical collective, I found this as a more interesting and pleasant release than the trashy "Psychedelic Underground". Here the sound quality is a bit more better, and the atavistic session excerpts have been molded as collages with editing and enriching them with sound effects. I guess this album would appeal to fans of tribal music, as there is a strong presence of ethnic collective drumming in the music, accompanied by intoxicated wailings and chaotic fuzzed electric guitars. There are also some very quiet parts there, though in some cases the building up of hypnotic trance is disturbed with sudden cuts or sounds, making this record a more chaotic listening experience than the following more mellow "Paradieswärts Düül" album, which I see as their most prolific release, and this one being a good second in their discography from the quality point of view.

Onwards and... Downwards?

After Psychedelic Underground, this starts out a bit of a train wreck (did you see what I did there...?), the opening number, Booster being a rather terrible jam with horrid, squealy guitars and no discernable vibe, man.

Bas Gestrichted is a bit better, with low voice below a tribal bongo layer, which only improves as the piece ends.

The drumming theme is continued throughout - but really, Drum Circus had already done this much better with Magic Theatre, and Can nailed the whole tribal feeling much better on Monster Movie.

Things don't improve (or vary) until Singvogel Ruckwarts, which is a much better investment of time for Krautrock fans, even if it does revert to the incessant drums. This piece is a lot more experimental, with tape (and who knows what) induced special effects producing a psychedelic kaleidoscope of aural audacity and sonic scrumminess.

From here, it just gets better, the band clearly having found their feet again - and given the amount of intoxicating substances present on this album, it's hardly surprising that they lost them in the first place... hey man, you seen my feet anywhere? Nah man, I was watching that yellow elephant grazing on my pot plants. Loads of wild tape slicing experiments here, making Can's seem a bit tame by comparison and it carries on getting better.

The overall trip seems to be that if you can stick with the ragged drumming, the overall musical flow increases, and comes more into focus, while at the same time splitting itself up into an unfathomable array - sometimes dissolving, sometimes returning - in short, becoming more and more interesting the longer you stick with it - and certainly tangibly more lysergic, throughout Lua Lua He and Shattering and Fading.

Everything winds down spectacularly on Nachrichten Aus Cambiston - then speeds up again - but it's always back to the drumming until we hit the Big Sound, which, sadly, does not live up to its name unless you've got the volume really high, in which case, the Big Sound comes from the overdriven mixing desk, with those VU meters bending into regions they really should not wot of going into.

A bit of a drop in musical quality and continuity here - it's kinda funny at first, but the tortured amps, whistling with feedback, soon become a bit grating, and the change for Krawall is highly welcome, and we're back to the drums and the experiments, where it all gets a bit honking mad. There's a lot more shape and intent to proceedings, however, like you're part of a big game with incomprehensible rules, sprung from some dark corner on the edge of reality.

Blech und Aufbau and Natura continue in this realm, with a surprising amount of invention given the limitations of the source material. It's kind of like the chaos produced by Langton's Ant. Natura is the least surprising of the two, however, sandwiching intense tribal poundings and rather dull acoustic guitar between recordings of birdsong.

In summary, an interesting album, with some real highlights, but some real lowpoints too - not for the faint-hearted, or fans of nice production and middle-of-the-road, easy-to-access music.

But hey, what Prog fan wants easy listening?

Pop music this ain't - but the quantity of anything you might think of as Prog is only about 50% within these grooves, so only recommended to Kosmisch addicts in need of a fix of the more mature stuff. Nearly a 40 year-old vintage. Approach with care, and there's lots to enjoy here.

Not an album to be tossed aside lightly... it should be thrown down with great force.

Jeez! This really is poor. Much worse than I remembered. A shockingly stark, poorly produced, rambling mess of an album that holds no coherence whatsoever. Recorded by a bunch of drug addled stoners who could barely lift a fag to their mouths. They're as sharp as a pound of wet liver.

'Collapsing' is the name this album deserves. It's clearly a jam by a bunch of layabouts who clearly couldn't give a monkeys about how the final cut would end up sounding. Give me one person... just one... who says this is a masterpiece and I'll shake them by the hand (or throat).

An album without one redeeming quality whatsoever. Even the junkies in the background can't shake their bloody bangles in time with the out of time bongos!

When they finally realise that things are falling apart at the seems we get tape cuts of noise in an attempt to cover the ineptitude. These splices are the the best parts of the album... .

Unfortunately life's too short to lisen to this rubbish.

The second LP from the first Amon Düül offers more of the same rumblings from the counterculture jungle. It sounds an awful lot (with emphasis on the awful) like the band's mind-numbing 1969 debut album, "Psychedelic Underground', and with good reason: the tapes came from the same loosely organized, lo-tech recording session.

The second edition might actually be slightly more varied than the earlier effort. But the thrill (such as it was) is long gone, and the sequel can't hide what it really was: leftovers that didn't survive the first round draft. Don't blame the hippies, though. They unwittingly sold the rights to that legendary jam session to producer Peter Meisel, who would continue releasing outtakes under the Amon Düül banner for years to come, cynically riding the coattails of the more successful Amon Düül II.

That backstory hardly improves the music, however. There seems to be less guitar and more drums this time around, all played with disarming amateur enthusiasm (i.e. badly). It might be unfair, but not inaccurate, to point out that the buzzing insects heard in the album's closing track "Natur (auf dem Lande)" exhibit more natural talent than the players themselves.

But in the end I have to admit I find the whole thing fascinating, in a tortured sort of way. Amon Düül was Punk Rock before Punk even existed: uncompromising and raw, but with the purest of hippie ideals behind it. The album makes a better political statement than a musical presentation, advocating creative freedom (without the straightjacket of talent), community fellowship, and of course a lot of mind-altering chemicals.

This may be the first time in over 1,153,473 reviews and ratings from the 53,770 members of these Archives that a single star was used as a mark of honor. If your taste in music runs to extremes, consider Amon Düül the first entrée in a Krautrock Paleo Diet.