Album Details

• Artist: Guru Guru
• Album: Ufo
• Label: ZYX
• Year of Release: 1971
• Original Release:
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2007-07-09

Of course, Julian Cope wrote the best review ever of this one, but I was there too. This Krautrock trio, lead by the certifiable Ax Genrich on guitar, blazed a path above and beyond the keyboard common to the genre, while retaining the spirit of exploration, tripping, and spiritual longing that makes band like Can and Faust still resonate. "UFO" was Guru Guru’s debut, and while they managed to go beyond it in terms of sounds and time and improv, this holds up as a standard to which, they at least, attempted to transcend. Instrumental but for the opener, the mind-warping "Stone In," tracks like "Der LSD-Marsch" and "Next Time See You At The Dalai Lhama" quickly reach an intensity either borne of much rehearsal or much of a "fuck it, let’s find god" ethic.

One of the few German bands of the era to love the guitar, there is much here that anticipates current trends in psych and stoner metal, as well as fed off of what was happening in Birmingham around the same time. So while we sit and wonder if Ozzy, as the minutemen sang of General Custer, will ultimately die with shit in his saggy fearful pants, we can listen to the underrated and monumental wonder that was Guru Guru, a band that took Sabbath, and their own reach for the stars, deadly seriously.

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