Guru Guru / Uli Trepte - Hot On Spot / Inbetween flac album

My review from From Audion #6, page 21 (published in October 1987)Guru Guru / Uli TrepteHOT ON SPOT / INBETWEEN (United Dairies UD 024) LP Well, now the LP is out (see review of the cassette in Audion #4 p.30), and magnificent it is too. Here the sides are reversed from the tape (or did it just arrive the wrong way round?) and the production quality is a lot clearer, thus it sounds really great when played loud. My guesswork about the musicians was about right, except that the winds player is Willi Pape of Thirsty Moon and not Edgar Hofmann. The Space Trip intro has been missed from the Guru Guru side, it did seem a strange place for it anyway. All in all, an excellent album with an amusing cover featuring kamikaze prams. Buy it!Discogs notes:strikethrough section was an error in the review!As this came out after Audion #5 (July 1987) and Audion #6 editorial is dated 9 October, that means this LP was issued circa late July to September 1987.

My review of this cassette, from Audion #4, page 30 (published in April 1987)Guru Guru / Uli Trepte - LIVE ‘72 / SESSION ‘74 (United Dairies UDT 07) MC As a long time fan of Uli Trepte’s Guru Guru, it was indeed a welcome surprise to learn of this album. For me the Guru’s were one of the best and most important bands of the early 1970’s Krautrock scene.Side 1 is the Guru Guru side, opening with the intro to Space Ship; lots of swirling guitar, bass and radio effects; then jumping straight into the most imaginatively lyrical Bo Diddley, this is far freakier than the LP version, the solos are more meticulous, Uli’s bass really booms and Mani’s drums rattle along - in fact there’s more of everything here, and 17 odd minutes of this is to say the least mind-blowing. It often amazes me how Ax Genrich managed to get the sounds he did out of his guitar, on the whole - playing guitar as imaginatively as this seems to be a sadly lost art of this period. It’s great to have another 20 minutes of the classic Guru’s, but I wish there was more.Side 2 is all the more curious, as I know very little about Uli’s activities in 1974. Around this time he was involved with Kickbit Information, but Uli says they never recorded any material. One musician definitely featured is Kickbit and ex-Frumpy drummer Carsten Bohn. There are no track details, musicians or recording dates given, so a lot of what you’ll read here is guess work...Track 1 is a typically Trepte style song, with bizarre lyrics -"Cosa Nostra, CID, Japain, Made in Germany, The Beatles, Chips with fish, united dish!", perfect poetry if you read it right! It sounds a bit like a jazzy version of early Guru Guru, though here there’s also some nice distorted electric piano, lots of radio noises and voices, the guitar solo is a lot more straight-forward than Ax’s style, although it does rip along furiously.Track 2, I’m informed, features Rosi Müller on vocals, however the band almost certainly feature Christian Burchard on marimba and Edgar Hofmann on flute, so what Rosi was doing here I don’t know. The song is very odd and unique, though is mostly instrumental - spurred along by numerous solos.Track 3 is again with Embryo musicians, it’s undoubtedly Roman Bunka singing and Burchard’s vibes. It’s the perfect fusion between the best Embryo and Guru Guru - the only thing I find disappointing with this cut is when it finishes, I could do with 20 minutes of music like this!Track 4 is a version of Earmike Song, which first made it onto vinyl on Spacebox’s KICK UP album in 1984. This version is far jazzier, Uli’s vocals are often treated so much that he sounds like he’s being strangled. I must admit that this track is a bit out of place here (style-wise), though it does help fill in another hole in Trepte’s career.So, if you’re a Guru Guru fan, into Krautrock, psychedelia or avant-garde, I’d say this is an essential purchase both for its excellent music and as a piece of musical history. This album should be out on LP soon!

A strange story with Nexus / Tripkick is that they would ship LP's outside covers, to avoid damage to the covers, however failing to secure the LP's in their inner sleeves meant that many of the LP's instead got damaged in transport from Germany to the UK. "No problem to replace" said Winfried Schlögel, as they had many more copies of the LP pressed than covers. That probably explains how this later issue appeared: original Tripkick LP's in a "home made" cover.