Album title: Tanz der Lemminge
Artist: Amon Duul II
Nationality: German
Label: United Artists
Chronology: Third
Grade: B
Tracklisting: Syntelman’s March of the Roaring Seventies: In the Glass Garden/ Pull Down Your Mask/ Prayer to the Silence/ Telephonecomplex/ Restless Skylight transistor-Child: Landing in a Ditch/ Dehypnotised Toothpaste/ A Short Stop at the Transylvanian Brain Surgery/ Race from here to Your Ears (i) Little Tornadoes (ii) Overheated Tiara (iii) The Flyweighted Five/ Riding on a Cloud/ Paralyzed Paradise/ H.G. wells’ Take Off/ Chamsin Soundtrack: The Marilyn Monroe-Memorial-Church/ Chamsin Soundtrack: Chewing-Gum Telegram/ Stumbling Over Melted Moonlight/ Toxicological Whispering
Comments: Just not my day is it? Not only an Amon Duul II album, but a fu
cking DOUBLE Amon Duul II album! I’m knackered after just having written out the titles of the tracks! This ain’t going to be fun, if my last experience of this band is anything to go by. All right then, let’s get it over with. God help me. Soft Machine, Tull, Amon Duul II - what did I ever do to deserve this? Well, look, it’s going to be hard to differentiate the tracks, as the Spotify copy lumps them all together as six under various headings as above so I’ll do my best, but I can’t promise much.
If I didn’t know better I would have said that was Bowie singing. It’s not though, it’s Chris Karrer. Very decent voice and doesn’t allow himself to be drowned out by the music while at the same time staying front and centre. Nice Spanish guitar bit there, and the tempo is ticking along nicely. Gone into a sort of loping rhythm now, but not anywhere near as bad as I had feared. Not yet anyway. Some fast congra drumming now attended by a busy bass line with guitar coming up forcefully. This all goes under the banner of “Syntelman’s March of the Roaring Seventies” and no I don’t so please don’t ask. Quite enjoyable I must admit. Good guitar and piano solo to finish. Next up is (deep breath) “Restless Skylight-Transistor-Child”. Yeah. More laid back and relaxed, almost an Indian feel to it and running for a total of just over nineteen minutes, some nice kind of orchestral stuff in here though it becomes a little distorted and dissonant.
Then a big chunky squawking guitar cuts in and the tempo jumps and now we have either some strange vocal effects or maybe they’re sound bites or something. Hell I don’t know. Very freaky man. Slowing down into a kind of eastern rhythm on guitar with a kind of chanted vocal. As I mentioned, these two pieces have been joined together by Spotify but feature several tracks whereas the next one up is one long eighteen-minute “improvisation” (the blood chills!) and goes under the name both of “Chansin Soundtrack” and then “Marilyn Monroe-Memorial-Church”. Right. Expect weirdness. And you won’t be disappointed. Strange, ambient sounds, church organs, whistles, calls, hollow drums, it’s all there. Wind sounds, footsteps probably. There’s almost a drone going on here; it’s sort of hypnotic and relaxing at the same time. Reminds me of the end of
2001: A Space Odyssey.
Piano coming almost out of the ether takes me a little by surprise. It’s not loud, in fact it’s introduced quite gently, but after all the spacey, ambient sounds it’s a different thing to hear and then there are rising tribal drums, which change the perspective of the whole thing. They fade out though and we’re back to ambient with a slice of piano, then a loud drone as the piece heads into its final minute, more drums - quickly gone, back again, gone again, and we’re out.
This leaves us with the odd-titled “Chamsin Soundtrack”. No, not part 2 or II or anything; the very same title as the previous track, but separate from it. It is however for once broken up into its component pieces, and the first of these is “Chewing Gum Telegram”, the shortest of the three at just over two and a half minutes, which has a growling guitar melody, very rocky, some nice soloing over the rhythm guitar, then “Stumbling Over Melted Moonlight” is guitar too but much heavier and almost metal in tone, slow and plodding, kind of menacing. Gets louder as it goes along, almost like something coming nearer, something perhaps scary. The last minute or so of the track is a bass line fading out, then silence, then a reprise of the bass line.
The final part of this suite, and the closer, is called “Toxicological Whispering” and is, oddly, almost as long as both the other two parts together. It again features guitar riffs primarily against a steady drumbeat which more or less stays the same up to the end.
Favourite track(s): Quite surprised to find I really pretty much enjoyed all of this
Least favourite track(s):
Overall impression: A whole lot better than I had thought it would be. Given that a) it’s a double album and runs for about an hour in total and b) I hadn’t exactly been bowled over by
Phallus Dei, I’m impressed.
Personal Rating: 4.50
Legacy Rating: 4.0
Final Rating: 4.25