Amon Düül - Luciferian acid-rock

In the Germany of the late Sixties, a hotbed of cultural avant-gardes – from cinema (Wenders, Herzog, Fassbinder) to rock (Can, Popol Vuh, Ash-Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream) – and steeped in the climate of post-'68 social protest, the Amon Düül project is born (taking its name from the Egyptian sun god Amon, and a character from a Turkish novel, Düül). The band's original nucleus forms in Munich, within an anarchist-freak commune of about a dozen people, part of the international movement against the war, where, amid free love and psychedelic drugs, free-rock recording sessions are organized. This is experimental music, strongly politically engaged, tied as it is to the utopia of flower-power dominant on both sides of the Atlantic. It ranges from electric free-rock to free acoustic digressions, from beat-rock to the most tribal folk: sounds that foreshadow the chaos and energy later condensed into punk music.

Within this rather unstable line-up, a split soon occurs: on one side, Amon Düül I, with the Leopold brothers (Peter and Ulrich) and Rainer Bauer; on the other, Amon Düül II, with Chris Karrer, John Weinzierl, Falk Rogner and singer Renate Knaup-Krotenschwanz. The former record for Metronome, the latter for Liberty, under the supervision of the guru of German indie rock, Olaf Kubler.

The link to the acid-rock psychedelia of Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane is tangible on the self-titled debut album by Amon Düül I, and even more so on their follow-up Para Dieswarts Dull (1970), released on Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser's Ohr label. The first side of the record contains the long suite "Love Is Peace", split into three parts; at first Dadam's voice settles into a soft acoustic backdrop, singing of mythical lands where love and peace still exist; what follows is a series of dense guitar arpeggios that help build an air of unreal calm, right up to the psychedelic improvisation of the final five minutes, which lets loose the band's free-form attitude. On the second side, "Snow Your Thurst And Sun Your Open Mouth" is an acid free-rock piece, driven by percussion and hypnotic drumming, with disorienting guitars that seem to conjure the otherworldly visions induced by LSD. The album closes with "Paramechanische Welt", which blends obsessive percussion with folk textures.

But Amon Düül II soon overtake their "cousins", thanks to more complex and elaborate sounds. Already active since 1968, at the time of the Essen days (Essener Songtage '68) with their avant-garde psychedelia, Weinzierl and co. establish themselves as standard-bearers of that krautrock that explodes in Germany with bands like Can, Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel. At first they offer a free form of psychedelia and an eclectic style, noisily blending acoustic, Eastern-tinged and electronic sounds. But their sound soon grows more complex, giving rise to a kind of pagan, naive "rock opera" that puts the band on the international map.

It is a very large line-up that gives birth to the first record under the Amon Düül II name, Phallus Dei. The album contains four tracks, plus the long 20-minute title track that closes it. The overture of "Kanaan" immediately draws the listener into an arcane, unsettling world, steeped in exotic, esoteric sounds, with a backdrop of mournful choirs evoking grim, infernal horizons. "Dem Guten, Schonen, Wahren" is another psychoanalytic nightmare, caught between tribal percussion and psychedelic atmospheres. "Luzifers Ghilom" does nothing to tone down the blasphemous charge of these hallucinated, terrifying sounds, with vocals that, left to drift in a sea of noise, grow ever more deranged and unhinged, with female choirs heightening the dreamlike effect.

The singer's demonic vocalizing continues on “Henriette Krotenschwanz” as well, a shorter track that evokes the long night of the Inquisition. The title track opens with a barrage of cosmic noise, amid desperate screams and frenzied strings, spilling over into a series of increasingly crooked and chaotic improvisations. The result is a kind of “acid nirvana,” achieved through a sonic orgy not unlike that of the Velvet Underground. The instruments sound uncoordinated and dissonant, first and foremost the violin (the devil's instrument), which together with organ and choir seems almost to lead the way on an imaginary journey through the circle of the damned.

The following Yeti picks up on this curious experiment, combining nods to Frank Zappa and “poor” electronics with Eastern sounds and psychedelia. Dance of the Lemmings (1971) further heightens the “lysergic” dimension: guitars filtered to varying degrees of harshness, ethnic percussion and electronic experimentation. Everything is geared toward pushing the listener into a psychedelic exploration that carries them off, unawares, to distant spaces. Much like Popol Vuh, who - as if living in a commune - shared some musicians with Düül II.

Fronted by Renate Knaup-Krotenschwanz, a sort of Teutonic Grace Slick, the Bavarian outfit embarked on a tour of Britain, which yielded Live in London. Over time, though, their music grew blander, shedding the demonic charge of their early days and veering toward a kind of lounge psychedelia, albeit still tinged with a dark undercurrent. Vive La Trance is the first example of this new direction. The defections then begin: first Olaf Kubler withdraws his support, then bassist Meid departs after Hijack, then it's Knaup's turn to leave the group (after Made in Germany) to join Popol Vuh. Weinzierl “holds out” until 1978, then joins Embryo. A year later, Amon Düül II resign themselves to splitting up. The 1981 reunion yields Vortex, but it adds nothing significant to their body of work.

Since 2001 the band has reunited to play a series of concerts across Europe and the United States, with a line-up featuring Renate Knaup-Kröotenschwanz (vocals), Lothar Meid (bass), Chris Karrer (guitar, sax), John Weinzierl (guitar), Peter Leopold (drums), P. P. Kuhnen (congas) and Jan Kahlert (percussion). Meanwhile, the music of Amon Düül II has become a fertile seed for a whole host of bands devoted to rediscovering “kraut-rock”, from Stereolab to Tortoise, from Julian Cope to Mouse on Mars. And it could be said that the dark, “Luciferian” nature of their sound also left its mark, in some way, on the gothic-rock movement.

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