Amon Duul II Yeti CD

Like its namesake mythical creature, Amon Duul II's YETI is a gigantic, threatening, and elusive beast that will easily trample listeners underfoot. Following up the epic PHALLUS DEI, YETI finds the Krautrock offshoot codifying their terrifyingly feral improvisations across four album sides of loud, psychedelic excess and dotting the fried landscape with a loose songcraft. "Soap Shop Rock," the four-part album opener, features droning organ, grilled violin, the distorted guitar tandem of Chris Karrer and John Weinzierl, and the yowling arias of Miss Renate Knaup fighting for space, while "Cerebus" loosens the band's more acoustic and Eastern yearnings. The entire album remains one of Krautrock's heavy masterpieces, but above the froth looms "Archangels Thunderbird," an anthem of demented catchiness for the ages.
The second album by Amon Düül II (not to be confused with the more anarchic radicals Amon Düül), 1970's Yeti, is their first masterpiece, one of the defining early albums of Krautrock. A double album on vinyl, Yeti consists of a set of structured songs and a second disc of improvisations. It's testament to the group's fluidity and improvisational grace that the two albums don't actually sound that different from each other, and that the improvisational disc may actually be even better than the composed disc. The first disc opens with "Soap Shop Rock," a 12-minute suite that recalls King Crimson's early work in the way it switches easily between lyrical, contemplative passages and a more violent, charging sound, and continues through a series of six more songs in the two- to six-minute range, from the ominous, threatening "Archangels Thunderbird" (featuring a great doomy vocal by mono-named female singer Renate) to the delicate, almost folky acoustic tune "Cerberus." The improvisational disc contains only three tracks, closing with a nine-minute stunner called "Sandoz in the Rain" that's considered by many to be the birth of the entire space rock subgenre. A delicate, almost ambient wash of sound featuring delicately strummed phased acoustic guitars and a meandering flute, it's possibly the high point of Amon Düül II's entire career. [Most CD issues have squeezed the two discs onto one CD by cutting three minutes out of "Pale Gallery," but the Captain Trips CD restores it to its full five-minute length.] ~ Stewart Mason

Digitally remastered edition of the second album by Amon Duul II and is quite a musical achievement. Originally this was a double vinyl album set and now has been released and remastered on 1 CD. "Yeti" includes some of Amon Duul's most impressive work, delivering their thick, full-fledged, multi-layered sound with dense instrumentation and a certain epic vastness in many ways not unlike the craftmanship of early Can. This is Krautrock in the full mass of its power: huge, towering, dark and completely devoid of any happy optimism, but still bound full of energy. Instrumentally this album is pure magic with some great psychy sitar'ish acoustic guitar plucking and hand percussion interplay. "Yeti" is abundant also in the fusion of electric guitar, bass and drum interplay. The 2nd album is totally devoted to improvisation and in itself stands up as some of the most intriguing music you will ever hear. The first few Amon Duul II albums are essential bits of the psych/prog era.Spin (9/01, p.134) - Included in Spin's "5 Essential Krautrock Records" - "...A bluesless Led Zep. This sprawling 1970 masterwork is half ultra-heavy psychedelic riffology, half tender, rambling improv."
Q (Magazine) (p.141) - "[A] double album brimming with ideas and influences from free jazz to Pink Floyd, occasionally endowed with a hard-rock punch..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.153) - "[T]hey stretch out with trippy improvisations featuring walls of feedback and largely intuitive time-changes."