1.Bear Family Records
Ougenweide : Ougenweide / Al die weil ich mag (D,1973/1974,re.2006)****°
For years I have been saying that I do not understand why the Ougenweide albums haven’t been reissued yet. Now, finally, after thirty years “es ist so weit”= this finally is happening, in pairs, of 'two albums on one'. The booklet provides a 24 page biography in English/German, with a detailed setting of the backgrounds, with pictures and also includes the lyrics with the complete original covers including the insert of the first album, making this booklet alone worth the purchase of this attractive and essential CD. The introduction mentions two influential acoustic music groups in Hamburg : The City Preachers with singer Dagmar Krause and Ougenweide. I think the importance of Ougenweide is comparable to Fairport Convention and Pentangle in the UK, and Malicorne in France.
The first album was a great debut which introduced folkrock with a Medieval inspiration, which was a new original form of “Minnesänger”/troubadour based acoustic folk-rock band music. The music was based upon a well documented reinterpretation of old songs or texts from mostly the 12th & 13th century inspired by people like Walther von der Vogelweide, Dietmar von Eist, and Neidhart von Reuenthal besides adding a few, fitting, self-penned songs. All the songs show beautiful interpretations, with also, here and there some nice progressive movements (just listen to the great instrumental section of sequenced electric guitar with great acoustic guitar improvisations, and a bit of keyboards on “Est stount..”). The remastered sound gives some renewed fire to these songs, and gave me a renewed appreciation (I have all the original albums), something which was already big before. On this first album, for the largest part, the fundamental sound of Ougenweide was formed. Slightly different from other tracks is “Eilenau”, a beautiful acoustic guitar layered instrumental, and “Der Sohn der Näherin” which features some fragments of sitar, and glockenspiegel, and has tabla percussion. Also the next instrumental, “Sarod” features and is mostly led by sitar, besides some extra acoustic guitar arrangements. The oddest, and last track sounds also more “progressive” and is a good track for leaving behind the first album before going on to the next.
This second album was the first I found by the group and for me was some revelation. I especially was amazed by some of the more progressive arrangements on mostly the longer tracks, with great flute (the band was a big Jethro Tull fan and played some covers in their early stage), percussion and vocal arrangements. Now, when hearing it back on cd, I also notice how incredible it is how some really old texts can still be, when interpreted by Ougenweide, so effective. “Der rivale” for instance has a funny provoking text on a rivalry situation. Also “Der Rattenfänger” (Goethe) with cello and Tull-like flute also appeals textually. Even when the first album was perfect as it was, the group progressed with its arrangements, also vocally, and tries more often some (semi)improvised sections. We hear a few attractive jig-like arrangements, and the flute tends tries to sound more progressive as well. Also this album features some beautiful small instrumentals, like “Für Irene” arranged by guitars and flute and a bit of glockenspiel. More tracks begin to sound absolutely memorable and impossible to compete with : -“classics”, like “der Blinde und der Lahme”. For two albums on one this gave an absolute perfect listen with no weak moment. Highly recommended.
Around this time the band played before many English folkrock groups in Germany, like Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Planxty, Amazing Blondel, and Alan Stivell, as well as to folk duo Kate & Anna McGarrigle.
2.Bear Family RecordsOugenweide : Ohrenschmaus / Eulenspiegel (D,1976,re.2006)****°
The live gigs with the great English folkrock bands and more publicity made the group’s popularity grow inside Germany. Also the group’s sound increased a few elements that would make them even more popular, and in some way, an unusual way, because they were more and more becoming like story tellers, for a huge crowd of listeners, just like the old troubadours, leaving here a bit the “poetic phase” behind, so not leading them deeper into an elite noblesse, while building once more on the form of their arrangements, leading to more progressive moments, but also to more popular and attractive arrangements, both at the same time. An instrumental progression on some songs from “Ohrenschmaus” is that there are more independent style arrangements included, apart from the folkrock song cores, arranged as inventive sections within the songs. While a track like “Bald Anders” show the kind of more recognisable, popular kind of attractiveness that will evolve in the end to the most popular later album, Fryheit, but then suddenly switches to a Tull like jig interpretation on flute on up tempo folkrock rhythms, and with orchestrations, showing how there was a good production team present.
Very logically this led to the next album, produced in the same year, ‘Eulenspiegel’. This was their first real concept, and was a ‘Ship of fools’ kind of folk satire. The first few tracks, for the compiled cd, continue very much in the vein of the “Ohrenschmaus” album, and one hardly notices entering the new concept. But here a longer story has been told, in songs and music. While consciously inspired and very focused, the songs all sound memorable and sound as if the story, which is sung beautifully with male and female vocals, and which is accompanied so fluently, is like a thousand years old, a archetypal metaphor which continues to surprise and sound new, like a rare memorable moment told during a perfect moment of a listening evening. The album is in no doubt the most advanced of theirs, at this stage, of their already very successful repertoire. There are also more Tull-like flute passages here, and the band has evolved to create a certain organic fluentness, almost rock-like, always thoughtful in each detail, and with of course also medieval arrangements to it. Simply brilliant. It is very understandable how this album found a reissue in Korea before on Si-Wan. Also one Latin text has been arranged. When in the 90's in the German and partly Swedish regions a neo-medieval movement was born, and compilations like Miroque tried to compile these groups, they included one old track of Ougenweide, which still blew all these other Gothics away, and sounded still the most modern and advanced of all these groups, from before their time. The track "mich der stunde" shows a bluesy improvisation on the theme including crumhorn ! Such a track shows the group's live ability to make something vivid from their own repertoire very easily on stage. Talented !! Musically I think that album is equally important as "Basket of Light" from Pentangle.
