TANZ DER LEMMINGE [AKA: DANCE OF THE LEMMINGS]

The band were in a bit of a shambles by this point; old members long gone, new ones in, some old ones only half-there. Renate Knaup only sings on one song, and under an assumed name at that, to give you a bit of a clue. For all that, it's a surprise this album's as good as it is. Actually, it allowed for the greatest amount of pure, flowing creativity of any of their releases. In short, it's quintessential Krautrock.

Each side of the original LP offered a different conception of the band. "Syntelman's March Of The Roaring Seventies" is as close to "conventional" prog as they've come, with folkish layered guitars and Mellotron. "Restless-skylight-transistor-child" isn't a suite so much as a collection of songs, riffs, electronic effects and musical ideas strung together through the magic of tape-editing. It's their "anything goes" side, from the monstrously distorted guitar rock of "Overheated Tiara" to the sitar/Mellotron mayhem of "A Short Stop At The Transsylvanian Brain Surgery". They even manage to find room for a touching duet between Renate and new bass-player Lothar Meid...and then cap it all off-appropriately-with "H. G. Wells' Take-off", a showpiece for guest performer Rolf Zacher, performing some truly bizarre avant-garde expressionistic vocalizations.

Disc Two of the original vinyl release was music used as the soundtrack for Veit Relin's film CHAMSIN. "The Marilyn Monroe Memorial Church" finds our intrepid travellers heading for deep space. Probably more like "Yeti" than "Phallus Dei" in that it's totally unstructured improvisation, but it remains compelling due to the incomparable mood established with the piece. The album closes with a trio of spacy guitar-rockers.

One of the touchstone Krautrock releases. Highly recommended to all aural adventurers.