Anyone with a penchant for the avant-garde free-form style that emanated from the instruments of the German band, Amon Düül, and from their more popular off-shoot version, Amon Düül II, might be pleased to learn that our increasingly interesting world of vinyl will visit the fans of this band with a collected series of 180g colored vinyl LP reissues. Remastered audio!
I already know that some of you could care less about vinyl, and for that I apologize. However, it is exciting news to learn that Cleopatra Records will present us with a graduated roll-out of vinyl titles from Amon Düül II beginning with Phallus Dei (1969), and Wolf City (1972), both scheduled for April 29.
In May, the label will re-release Dance Of The Lemmings (1971). In June, the plan is for Vive La Trance (1973), and a VERY limited run of 500 of the 2LP Yeti title from 197o. The newly released Yeti will be issued in a special edition lenticular jacket.
While all of that is great news for vinyl collectors, and fans of the band, the best news is that the band will be releasing new material. The band has been gone from the recording world for twenty years, their last being Nada Moonshine in 1995. On June 10, three original members of the band (John Weinzierl, Chris Karrer, and Renate Knaup) will release Düülirium! with a promise for “…avoiding industry music, heading for new frontiers”.
Düülirium! will be made available on CD, DD, and vinyl LP.
Alright, this is starting to get under my skin a little. I have nothing against vinyl, but it is a niche market and when they talk about remasters and only being available on LP, it harkens back to the days when the majors started to turn off the vinyl tap and forced people into the CD format, like it or not. And nothing against these small labels doing their thing – but I can see the day coming when CD lovers will not be getting their favourite reissues. The last few mailouts from Spin had about 90% vinyl reissues. Imagine if Steven Wilson’s Aqualung had been done only on vinyl? All physical formats are losing ground to audio files. I am trying harder now to fill in some of the blanks in my collection before the CDs become too hard to find.
Bill, I get your frustration. Especially where a new remaster is concerned, which is only available on vinyl. Those titles should be on CD as well.
I couldn’t believe I never heard of these guys since they were a late 60’s early 70’s band. Then I went to Amazon and read up a bit. Lyrics in german explains it all. Unless their music is mostly instrumental with few lyrics then I am not interested even though they seem like my kind of band.
Actually, from the way things are going, in the future these re-issues may be released as vinyl and hi-res discs with no regular cds. To me it just seems like they have realized that the main market for physcial media is becoming those of us that are serious audiophiles tilted toward customers over 40 years of age. The mainstream and younger audience is willing to settle for crappy mp3s downloads.
All they had to do was ask us, right?