Dupe Guru

There’s been a gradual increase in genre bending bands emerging from the artful depths in recent years. KING GIZZARD AND THE LIZARD WIZARD, RAKETKANON and GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES! all spring to mind, and nestled within their ranks are Belgian five-piece THE GURU GURU. Their new album Point Fingers is a record that refuses to conform to any already established boundaries yet holds it’s own with some semblance of structure that feels like every single chaotic moment has been thought about deliberately.

Guru Guru is a German krautrock band formed in 1968 as The Guru Guru Groove by Mani Neumeier (drums), Uli Trepte (bass) and Eddy Naegeli (guitar), later replaced by the American Jim Kennedy. After Kennedy collapsed on stage due to a serious illness, Ax Genrich replaced him to complete the classic Guru Guru line up, in time for their debut album in 1970.

Live 1978 by Guru Guru is a captivating album released by Repertoire Entertainment Gmbh. This live recording showcases the innovative and dynamic sound of the German krautrock band during their performance in 1978.

Over the last five decades, krautrock pioneers Guru Guru have pushed boundaries and experimented with free jazz, rock'n'roll, Indian, South East Asian and African rhythms and scales to create their own brand of psychedelic, cosmic rock. This reissue of their acclaimed 1977 album is an excellent representative of their global experiment, which has succeeded impeccably. Recorded after long stays in India in the mid-1970s, Globetrotter is a milestone in Guru Guru's discography. Total playing time: 40 minutes. In stereo. Fully remastered.

Guru Guru's debut album shows why the band, even if it never reached the levels of appreciation and influence the likes of Can or Neu! did, still maintained a healthy reputation over the moons for its early work. Opening number "Stone In" has a quite appropriate title for a starting track - it is wonderfully tripped out, to be sure, and if Manuel Gottsching was more of a guitar god, Genrich kicks up a lot of frazzled noise. The principle of the Trepte/Neumeier rhythm section seems to have been "find loud weird grooves and then play them, sometimes chaotically." Again, they aren't Can's wickedly effective combination of Holger Czukay and Jaki Leibezeit, but they're not just falling over themselves either. The title track is the most memorable song, almost entirely eschewing conventional rhythm for an inward collapse of feedback and noise that sounds either like the Stooges' "LA Blues"…

The third album from the essential Krautrock power trio Guru Guru's early forays is as essential to the avant-rock collector as Faust's Faust Tapes, Can's Tago Mago, and the early experiments of Kraftwerk and Neu! Dating from 1972, it's an unprecedented display of drone-rock on the heavier, psychedelic side of the '70s German underground. Guru Guru's lineup changed periodically, and throughout the '70s, the project took contributions from Conny Plank and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, among others, and were tightly connected with the Kraftwerk off-shoot Harmonium. This album is undoubtedly one of their greater works, alongside UFO and Hinten recorded by the essential trio of Ax Genrich on guitar, Uli Trepte on bass, and leader Mani Neumeier on drums and keyboards.