Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Holderlin - Holderlin's Traum (1972)



This entry isn't so much to delve into a specific group as to just talk about a specific group's album. Also, there's no youtube clip for this post, so if you only really come here for the clips I guess you should just move along and wait a few days cause there will be plenty of those coming.

Ahh, but to the point or the subject...or....the topic of this humble little entry. I didn't know anything about Holderlin when I decided to pick up their first album Holderlin's Traum. A quick google search yielded very little information and what information I could find was in Japanese or some other language I couldn't even pretend to understand. The information I could gather was the following;

Holderlin started out primarily playing cover tunes of German folk songs during much of the 1960's. Hailing from Germany, the band was founded by two brothers, Christian and Joachim Grumbkow. In the early 1970's they received a record contract and the album, Holderlin's Traum was their first release. They went on to continue releasing music well into the 1980's, but I've not had a chance to hear anything but Holderlin's Traum and frankly, I'm afraid that if I did pick up any of their later efforts, I'd probably be disappointed.

This album is great stuff. Most songs are peppered with strong, ethereal female vocals, but the third song "Strohhalm" is pulled along by some great male vocals. The stand out tracks are their shorter songs, like the second track "Peter", which showcases some beautiful acoustic guitar work at the beginning right before jumping into a jaunty folk groove. This song consistently gets stuck in my head. I wish I knew German so I wouldn't have to just go "na na na na" to the parts I don't understand!

The album shifts effortlessly between folk and krautrock stylings. The song "Requiem Fur Einen Wicht" is the most indicative of this fusion of techniques. Actually, there's a wide melding of styles; eastern influences, jazz, prog, folk, kraut. Each song handles the union of these musical approaches creatively and beautifully.

In short, I'm pretty bummed that I can't supply you people with some media of the band. But I highly suggest you try tracking it down, or if you know me, eventually I'll probably play it for you....because that's just what I do, isn't it?

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