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“Wolf City”, the city of the Wolf, a title that evokes an era of Decadence of Western civilization and ancient mysteries. The Amon Düül II in this cult work, epochal in its own way, confirm themselves as one of the best realities of 70s rock: from the splendid cover, an aura of dark terror is evident and will be fully confirmed along the grooves of the record.
In “Wolf City” the Amon Düül II reach a compactness of "sound" that makes them increasingly appealing to foreign markets, primarily the British one, though inevitably something is lost in madness and creativity: however, the music benefits from greater structuring. The great protagonist is the Wagnerian voice of Renate Knaup, who had already enlivened the previous Carnival In Babylon.
It starts with "Surrounded by the stars", where Renate Knaup's epic and dramatic voice immediately enters the scene in a thrilling "para-operatic" interpretation: we are in the realm of a black psychedelia that sounds as if the Jefferson Airplane had moved to Germany and combined the acid of "hippie" culture with the all-German impetus and the background of Europe's darkest legends. "Green-Bubble-Raincoated-Man" once again features Renate Knaup on vocals in a piece with a perfect and enviable melody by any band.
It then reaches the emotional peak of the record, namely "Jail-House-Frog": the track begins with the West Coast wailing guitar that sounds hard and incisive in a surprising manner, entering directly without detaching from the listener's mind until a long cosmic piano interlude punctuated by background noises of crazy creatures evoked by the magic of the Amon Düül commune comes in.
The B-side holds other surprises, starting with the powerful title track "Wolf City", which is immediately followed by a cosmic-raga for sitar (played by guest Al Gromer) and tablas that bring the group's sounds closer to those of their compatriots Popol Vuh, with whom they will, not coincidentally, also exchange some members like guitarist Danny Fichelscher and Renate Knaup herself. It continues with the epic "Deutsch Nepal", where the music evokes a Nepalese monastery haunted by the voice of a madman recalling the voice of the Führer and from which it is impossible to escape. It closes with the electro-acoustic-folk patterns of "Sleepwalker's Timeless Bridge", where the group shows how much technical expertise they had managed to achieve.
This is the last great album of Amon Düül II, the group will indeed continue tirelessly for many years, releasing even high-quality records like Vive La Trance, but they will no longer be able to reach the artistic heights of the early '70s. To cater to the market, the sounds will become increasingly predictable and banal, although, in the end, the memorable times of the melodies and harmonies generated by the madness of this commune are not so far away.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Surrounded By The Stars (07:46)
You walk
Surrounded by the stars
So many days
And you knock
At the gates of night
No answer
But you walk in
With your decrees
And you go out
With shaking knees
A street-sweeper appears
Makes your dusty feet clean
Come and jump
On my Are-You-Tired machine
At sunrise
You play your violin
On Napoleon's nose
A cop comes and says
You are one of those
But you jump
Into the trumpet of a clown
And you say to yourself
Maybe I shall leave this town?
You walk
Beside the twilight street
Jewel of the town
And you pass
The make-up zoo
Where hungry people meet
They ask you
And you give them
All you need
For a trip to the South
Maybe you think
What sort of idiot am I
Without a bone in my mouth
And you turn to the sunrise
You see a famous face
Behind a golden fence
A voice sounds round the corner:
This is you very last chance!
But you laugh
Like the son of a kangaroo
I don't believe the TV screen!
I don't believe you too!
04 Wolf City (03:20)
Wolf City
You are a pearl
Without pity
Your glory
Is like ice cream
Dripping on the skin of a girl
And your voodoo-graph
Is going to conquer the world
While the greyhound
Leans back in the president's chair
And thousands of children
On their way home
Gasp for fresh air
Your servants
Set up a lean-horse-monument
In the alley of cars
A queue with no end
And thousands of cows
Rush into bars
On a wall I see
Many strange signs
They say: Johnny B. Goode
06 Deutsch Nepal (03:00)
Ein General stand an meiner Wiege,
Sprach: «Es ist ein schönes Kind
Es wird mein Mann,
Wie ich ihn liebe,
Gouverneur vielleicht, in Deutsch Nepal!»
Ich bin geboren
Im Land der Krieger, äh - Krieger,
Bemühe mich
Ein Held zu sein.
Doch die Siege - äh -
Lassen auf sich warten, äh - warten!
Vielleicht irrte sich der General - General - General!
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