This album was made during an argument. Partway through 1972 the band fell out, and some members walked off to record a separate album under the name Utopia — and then, in the most Amon Duul II way imaginable, everyone made peace while both records were still being recorded, ended up playing on both, and let a single track appear on each in slightly different form. Out of that chaos came Wolf City, the fifth album, and one of the most beloved records in the catalogue: the moment they made their sound compact without making it tame.

The short version

Their fifth album, recorded at the Bavaria Studios in Munich in July 1972 and released that year on United Artists, produced by the band with Olaf Kubler; seven tracks, around thirty-five minutes on the original LP. Chris Karrer plays six- and twelve-string guitar, violin and soprano saxophone; John Weinzierl plays guitar; Renate Knaup sings; Falk Rogner plays organ, clavioline and synthesizer; Lothar Meid plays bass and synthesizer; Daniel Fichelscher plays drums. Jimmy Jackson guests on choir organ and piano. Two of the songs are group-written; the rest are shared among Karrer, Weinzierl, Rogner and Meid. On the US pressing the two sides are reversed.

Utopia and the truce

The split that produced this record is the key to it. Bassist Lothar Meid and producer Olaf Kubler had a side project, Utopia, and the sessions for the two albums overlapped at a moment when the band was quarrelling; the reconciliation came mid-recording, which is why the personnel bleed into each other and why Deutsch Nepal exists in two versions, one here and one on Utopia, differing mostly in the vocals. What is remarkable is that none of this friction shows as strain. Wolf City sounds like a band that has learned to compress. After the sprawl of Tanz der Lemminge and the first steps toward songs on Carnival in Babylon, this is the record where the compacting works completely — the pieces are shorter and more structured, but the strangeness and the cosmic reach are entirely intact. When your more commercial album is this experimental, the band is in a very good place.

The sound

Lively, aggressive without being loud, and dripping with the things this band did best: distorted wah-wah guitar, phasing effects, vintage keyboards, and Knaup’s aetheric voice riding over the top. The range is wide — you can hear early Pink Floyd in the epic opener, a hint of the punk mood still years away, and the kind of cosmic instrumental attack that bands like the Ozric Tentacles would later build careers on. Weinzierl’s snapping guitar chords and Rogner’s synthesizers are the engine; the addition of Fichelscher on drums gives it a harder, tighter drive than the earlier records. It is more structured than anything before it and it loses nothing for that. Many listeners rank it just behind Yeti and Tanz der Lemminge, and some rank it level.

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The songs

Surrounded by the Stars opens at nearly eight minutes, Karrer and Rogner’s piece, Weinzierl’s snapping chords under Knaup’s voice, and it is a small epic — early Pink Floyd blended with American pop-psych and the band’s own eclectic strangeness. Green-Bubble-Raincoated-Man starts almost as a ballad, changes tempo halfway and ends in a furious synth finale; it is the trippiest thing here. Jail-House Frog is the instrumental, and the synthesizer genuinely croaks like a frog. The title track is short and sharp. Wie der Wind am Ende einer Strasse is the group-written one, with a phrasing that has been likened to the mood of German literary Romanticism. Deutsch Nepal is the overtly experimental piece that also turns up on Utopia. And Sleepwalker’s Timeless Bridge closes — Fichelscher and Rogner’s composition, and by wide agreement one of the most remarkable tracks the whole Krautrock era produced.

Reception and legacy

It stands, with Yeti and Tanz der Lemminge, in the front rank of the catalogue, and it is the one that proves the shift toward songs did not have to mean a loss of nerve. Coming right after it, Carnival in Babylon gets called the underrated one and Wolf City gets called the successful compromise, but the truth is they are companion pieces from the same transitional moment, and this is the more consistent of the two. Meid stayed central to the band’s sound through the mid-seventies; Fichelscher would go on to Popol Vuh. For anyone who loves the wild early albums but wants the same band in tighter focus, Wolf City is the record that answers the request without compromising a thing.

The verdict

Essential, and one of the best entry points to the band alongside Yeti — more approachable than the early sprawl, far stranger than the later pop. If Tanz der Lemminge is too long a journey to start with, begin here. Play Surrounded by the Stars and Sleepwalker’s Timeless Bridge. Then Tanz der Lemminge and Yeti for the wild peak this compresses, and Carnival in Babylon for its closest sibling. A band that fought, made up mid-session, and turned the whole mess into one of its finest and most focused records.

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