Album title: Yeti
Artist: Amon Duul II
Nationality: German
Label: Liberty
Chronology: Second
Grade: A
Previous Experience of this Artist: Their debut album
The Trollheart Factor: 2
Landmark value: According to one commentator, not only the cornerstone of Amon Duul II’s career, but of the entire krautrock movement. Quite a statement.
Tracklisting: Soap Shop Rock (i) Burning Sister (ii) Halluzination Guilltoine {iii) Gulp a Sonata (iv) Flesh-Coloured Anti-Aircraft Alarm/ She Came Through the Chimney/Archangel Thunderbird/ Cerberus/ The Return of Rübezahl/ Eye-shaking King/ Pale Gallery/Yeti/Yeti Talks to Yogi/Sandoz in the Rain
Comments: A double album, clocking in at just over the hour mark, I feel much of this may be improvised jams, but we’ll see. I’m not familiar enough with krautrock to know what to expect. The first track, as you can see from the listing above, is a sort of suite, and the first part of that, “Burning Sister” puts me very much in mind of Hawkwind, while the second, “Halluzination Guillotine” is a slower, more moody crunching type with some fine guitar work. A very short kind of interlude next and then it’s on to the weirdly-titled “Flesh-Coloured Anti-Aircraft Alarm.” Indeed. All very jammy and freak-out, man.
Things slow down for the first time with “She Came Through the Chimney” which has a really nice soft guitar line and some flute or horns going, think it may be an instrumental. Yeah it was. The next one goes right back to the rocking freak-out, and seems to involve a female vocal which I personally find awful, but, you know… Seems like “Cerberus” isn’t a lot different musically, though it seems too to be an instrumental, nothing like “She Came Through the Chimney” however; much rockier and jammier. A short one then for “The Return of Rübezahl” before we’re into “Eye-Shaking King” with shimmers with a pounding, savage guitar line before settling down and on almost without pause into “Pale Gallery”.
This takes us to what was side three of the double-album, taken up entirely at the time by an eighteen-minute improvisational title track, which seems to blend ambient, psychedelic and space rock influences, and I just have the impression that, even at eighteen minutes, there ain’t gonna be no singing parts. It’s certainly not broken up into sections like “Soap Shop Rock” was, and seems to be a chance for the guys to show off what they can do on their instruments, which is a lot. It’s pretty damn good, to be fair.
“Yeti Talks to Yogi” seems to just retread this idea, almost an extension of the improvisational eighteen-minute track, and then we close on a soft, Santanaesque “Sandoz in the Rain” with a lot of bongos and flutes. Far out, man!
Favourite track(s): She Came Through the Chimney/Yeti (improvisation)/Sandoz in the Rain
Least favourite track(s): Nothing I hated, but the rest was kind of meh to me
Overall impression: Perhaps krautrock won’t be for me, but if these guys were the key to it, then you have to give them props. Personally though I was mostly bored by this album.
Personal Rating: 
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