HELICOPTER
GOLEM begins with "HELICOPTER" in which the phased vocals and twittering VCS3 of Johannes Vester set up a sound worthy enough to accompany some newly-imported space religion. A few minutes into this comes the electronic pulsings of Ludwig Papenberg and the strummed bass of Uli Papenberg, rhythmic but wholly uninterested in the 4/4 beats of rock'n'roll. Their sea shanty listing ship rocks from side to side, as Johannes Vester takes up the story:
"In the sky is flying high a blackbird with a dusty cry,
On the hills the ravens croak while satyr plays a dreadful joke,
By the water damp fog whirls, see the smoking, steaming earth,
And the air is dark and strange and cold...."
Where does this guy get his pronounciation from? Is this a regular voice in Bodenwerder? Are orators of this type ten-a-penny round his neck of the woods? Or does Johannes Vester inhabit the peripheries of every neighbourhood? Around eight or so minutes into "HELICOPTER", a whole other rhythm takes over and we're suddenly pitched into a world of the recent dead. Now, Vester is some north European shaman summoning reluctant spirits out of their graves. Just as Odin pissed off the sleeping Goddesses with his acts of midnight seething, so then up pops Johannes to do the same to poor old sleeping Allfather himself.
Next up is that crazy "OLD LOGGERHEAD" song, which kicks off with the eeriest harmonica and synthesizer-cross-the-swamp. Down comes the slow descending bass chords of Uli Papenberg, as Vester begins his next strange tale of dark forest characters at the edge of sleepy dark age townships.
"He scraped a living in a ramshackle cot
Outside the village near the mystery wood."
Of course Old Loggerhead's behaviour is far too anti-social for the locals, themselves guilty of all kinds of clandestine habits. And Vester continues his tale of how:
"Once some fellows stalked up to his shack
They used caution - took the old beaten track
Painted a white cross on the brittle gate
So they marked the place of imaginary fate
And they returned to their peace-loving folk
Reported excited on the nocturnal joke."
Hearing Vester pronounce the phrase 'once some fellows' is a revelation in itself. And when he tells of Old Loggerhead's disappearance with a 'sinister giggle' the effect is quite superbly chilling. And, as I said at the start of the review, you can't get a better lyrical pay-off than:
"He was an Old Loggerhead - and actually long ago he is dead."
Lying there, awaiting the day...
Side Two opens with the Alpen folk of "MAY RAIN", a strange cross between Pearls Before Swine and Witthüser & Westrupp, with a melody directly from Can's 'Vitamin C'. Mallet-balalaika and picked winter acoustics hurry along with hook-nosed song like long-coated spirit-Fagins on some unknown stroke-of-midnight mission to the gates of Hel (sic).
By the time we come to "ON THE CORNER", Vester's dialect has become cross-continental. He moves happily and effortlessly from a kind of Brummie-Swiss Syd Barrett to cartoon Norwegian milkmaid and her cow, via South Africa and the Amish - and sometimes all in the space of one line of lyrics. "ON THE CORNER" is the catchy one. Y'know how certain songs sound like singles NOT because they're commercial, but because they are just not nearly so fucking weird as the stuff that' gone before. Well "ON THE CORNER" is that guy. Starts with boogie drum machine, moves through several (catchy) beat you ever did hear. Hear it the first time you laugh. Then you whizz back in case you misheard. Then you listen one final time for pleasure and the sheer audacity of THAT beginning. Finally you hear the entire song, and by the way it is great.
"Well, I'm standing on the corner with my feet soaking wet", sings Johannes Vester, over a soul bass line and an acoustic guitar and not much else. Maybe his voice is just a fucking genius joke because the guy sounds like a sheep-shagger. I'm not saying he is but he don't half sound like it. Sounds like the biggest hick yokel ever allowed in the recording studio - makes "Da Da Da" by Trio sound truly worldly wise and city slick! And then we get to the line about Johannes having 'a pain in my bones', he really makes the overly-mannered pronunciation of Marc Bolan and Donovan sound bog standard in comparison.
The album closes with the ten-minute two-part epic called "SARAH" - a sort of Not Available-period Residential lost-Child-Goddess-in-the-attic-of-the-world tale. Part one asks the same question over and over again: "Is it you Sarah? No, it's the storm." The sounds are atmospheres which fall and rise like the breathing of the twilight wind on the Marlborough Downs. The music is the movement of the Sun glimpsed from some ancient eminence in that final hemi-second before it dips below the storm are one. And even though Sarah the Storm Giantess has picked her way everso carefully through their neighbourhood, she has still "uncovered all the fields" and "placed petrified trees". And so uncover of darkness, Sarah is "gone with the stream". Sarah is gone, Sarah is gone, Sara is gone... fade... Sarah is gone... fade... Sarah is gone...
And so the GOLEM LP finishes. Sand had a truly eternal sound. Like the Montgolfier Brothers hanging above 19th century Paris, it is so close but so out-of-reach that you could imagine them blowing away at any moment - a life threatening experiment which seems superficially simple to achieve.
