GURU GURU Hinten ORIG Ohr label psych freakout LP HEAR

$

67

Hey, look at this!  What we have here may be the first time the FRONT cover of an album is actually the REAR!  Okay, that’s a bad joke, but I guess it helps to explain why there are not one but FOUR superimposed shots of some guy’s butt on the cover of Guru Guru’s “Hinten” album, once you understand that “Hinten” means “behind” in German.  Not only that, I don't even want to VENTURE a guess as to what's pictured on the INSIDE gatefold (hint:  I think our cover model turns around).  As for explaining the actual MUSIC herein, well, you’re on your own for that.  I can tell you what it SOUNDS like, and I can tell you that if you’re familiar with the freeform cosmic freakout that was their first album “UFO”, “Hinten” only proves that the aliens are still living among us, and still hellbent on consuming every tab of acid within licking distance.  If you’re looking for the patient, pastoral cosmic bliss-outs of fellow krautrock bands like Popol Vuh and Tangerine Dream, this ain’t it, boys and girls, and the fire-breathing guitar riff that greets you at the start of Side 1 will help you determine that fact right away.  “Hinten” is brutal stuff, as loud and obnoxious as a drunken Oktoberfest tent, as fierce and freeform as Amon Duul 2 after a year of music lessons.  And if you’re not ready for it, it might just kick you in the Hinten.  “Electric Junk” opens the album with that aforementioned juggernaut of a guitar riff, crackling evil Stygian electricity while Animal from the Muppet Show Band thrashes and pounds on his flame-ravaged kit behind.  For the first six minutes, this is a paean to the joys of making noise on an electric guitar – as TWIN axes wheeze, spit and hiss their symphony of feedback and distortion, all the while flailing back and forth from speaker to speaker, criss-crossing in the air like two dying Rodans sucked back into he volcanos which birthed them.  Then, after six and a half minutes, they succumb, and the music dies down, giving way to the sound of some furry electronic animals gathered in a cave and grooving with a pict, synthesized crickets and chipmunks chittering away in some remote Bavarian forest.  What sounds like a human voice slowed WA-A-Y down (a la Hendrix’s “Third Stone From the Sun”) replaces the crazed Scotsman of Roger Waters’ inspirational passage, and makes an already freaky song even more disturbing.  Like the image of four men’s butts, this really IS the stuff of nightmares.  But right before you’re about to check under the bed one last time, a sliding guitar kicks in and shoves us headfirst into a frenetic 21st Century schizoid riff, racing through the homestretch and wrapping up the first of four equally demented, completely acid-fried “songs.”  Next up, “The Meaning of Meaning”, which doesn’t explain anything really, except how the sheer power of a razor-sharp knife-shredding laserblast guitar solo can totally rip apart even the most relaxing of space drones.  You don’t need to know the mysteries of the cosmos to know that, my friend.  Now flip this acid-riddled space puppy over and you’re immediately greeted with a song called “Bo Diddley”, which raises a flag right away.  Are you gonna tell me that three white boys from Deutschland are gonna school us on the sounds of hambone rhythms from 1950’s Missisissippi?  Well, no, they aren’t.  And it’s apparent that, immediately after the triumphant shout of “Bo Diddley!” that starts this song, Guru Guru really have no idea who Bo Diddley was.  This doesn’t even follow the simple Bo Diddley rhythm, instead following a jazzy freeform space march, layered with ripples of dirty scratch guitar and funky wah wah that careens from speaker to speaker.  Another guitar unleashes a torrent of heavy, destructive, canyon-carving power chords, great belches of electric noise that sound like they’re giving birth to individual hairy 70’s rock bands with each kerrang, while the drums shuffle and thrash along to some mysterious gelatinous jazz rhythm that’s only known to musicians ingesting the same chemical substances.  So unless I missed something and Bo Diddley was in fact a member of King Crimson in 1972, then Guru Guru’s “Bo Diddley” has absolutely diddley to do with Bo.  But again, it’s not the fact that they’re unqualified to comment that’s bothersome, it’s their sheer determination to go for it anyway that’s so darn admirable.  For all they care, they coulda shouted out “Joni Mitchell!” for ten minutes while cranking out great walls of guitar feedback – to Guru Guru, it just doesn’t matter.  After this shameless rape of blues history, there’s little for the band to do but come down.  Which is just what they do on the 11-minute album closer, “Space Ship.”  This is your father’s krautrock here, kids – a long, patient, moody journey through some Romulan territory wormhole, twisting and weaving on a space cloud of keyboards and cosmic space debris, lifting random sound effects from Gene Roddenberry’s tape library and putting them to better use.  For once, and only once, the title of the song fits the song, and provides the necessary amount of time needed to pry yourself off the ceiling after the previous half hour.  In some ways, “Hinten” is even FURTHER out than “UFO”, and despite its freeform nature, still has much more of a groove than its predecessor.  It’s heavy, it’s got a good beat, but you can’t dance to it.  And it’s got a man’s butt on the cover, four times.  So THAT’S what they meant by the crack in the cosmic egg? This is an original 1971 pressing on the German OHR label.  Cover in VG++ shape with only the slightest corner wear knocking it down from EXCELLENT.  Vinyl looks clean and plays great (listen to sound clip), grades EXCELLENT.
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