Amon Düül II - 1975 - Lemmingmania

Amon Düül II 

1975

Lemmingmania

01. Archangel's thunderbird (3:30)

02. Light (3:48)

03. Between the eyes (2:24)

04. Green bubble raincoated man (5:04)

05. Tables are turned (3:34)

06. Rattlesnakeplumcake (3:16)

07. All the years round (4:07)

08. Jail-house frog (4:54)

09. Soap shop rock (3:41)

10. Lemmingmania (3:00)

This compilation includes the following singles...

1. Archangel's Thunderbird / Excerpt From Soap Shop Rock

2. Rattlesnakeplumcake / Between The Eyes

3. Light / Lemmingmania

4. All The Years Round / The Tables Are Turned

plus album selections...

Green Bubble Raincoated Man, Jail-House-Frog

Some CD reissues also include extra tracks.

- Dave Anderson / bass (1-9)

- D. Secundus Fichelscher / drums

- Karl-Heinz Hausmann / keyboards & electronics (5-7)

- Chris Karrer / acoustic & electric guitars, violin, Soprano sax, vocals

- Renate Knaup-Krötenschwanz / vocals

- Peter Leopold / drums, synthesizers (4)

- Lothar Meid / bass, vocals

- Falk U. Rogner / organ, synthesizers

- Shrat / bongos, vocals (1-9)

- John Weinzierl / acoustic & electric guitars, vocals

+ Jimmy Jackson / piano, choir organ (4-8)

- Olaf Kübler / backing vocals (8)

- Rolf Zacher / backing vocals (8)

This was released back in 1975 and it does seem strange having an AMON DUUL II record that consists of songs all under or around 5 minutes in length. Chis Karrer one of my musical heroes once said of his band AMON DUUL II that "Improvisation was everything". Chris is a multi-instrumentalist playing mostly guitar, sax and violin and he was right, it's what most AD II fans love about this band. Still I just love their sound which is why I picked this one up despite that there are no songs from their masterpiece "Phallus Dei".

I'm not going to review this song by song because i've already done that with most of these but I will focus on the four previously(at the time) unreleased tunes. I do have two of those unreleased tracks as bonus songs on the "Yeti" edition I have, and they are "Between The Eyes" and "Rattlesnakeplumcake". The former is rather dark and heavy with some brief crazy vocals and prominant guitar while the latter has male and female vocals with some excellent violin play on it. There are two songs on here that I haven't heard before. One is "Light" which was an earlier version of "Stumbling Over Melted Moonlight" from the "Tanz Der Lemminge" album. This one has vocals on it and I quite like it even if it is fairly straight-forward. The other is the title track which is my favourite on here. It was apparently released as a single back in the day but it sounds so different from their usual sound. This is a very uplifting, heavenly sounding track that simply transports me. Kind of like some of those SENSTIONS' FIX songs. Just a great instrumental.