In search of the Bavarian cheetah: the case of Guru Mani Neumeier's Neue Abenteur

Above is the cover art for the 1983 LP Guru Mani Neumeier's Neue Abenteuer. The slightly punny German in the title translate to "new adventure", which fits the music contained on the record, as much as I can hear of it, anyway. You may have noticed that I don't mention the authorship of the album, because it's not certain, even from official sources: the Guru Guru website says this is Mani Neumeier's solo debut, while his personal site listed this as a Guru Guru studio album. It seems various internet databases can't decide either, ask prog archives and discogs, they will give different answers, as will rateyourmusic and babyblaue. No more helpful is the information on the packaging: the back cover says Guru Guru, the center label says Mani Neumeier. I remain undecided, myself.

Looking back, It's no secret that Guru Guru aren't sticking to the exact style that they started with since their formation in 1968. Say what you will about their music after the departure of Uli Trepte, they were always morphing, always evolving. While the debut release, UFO, is still a personal favorite, I have thoroughly enjoyed every album since. Guru Guru are possibly the only rock (with a loose definition of the genre) band to still put out downright amazing fresh recordings in their advanced age, all the while still putting on a great show on stage. 2000 Gurus was praised on it's release for the seamless integration of emerging musical technologies into the instrumental palette, and much the same could be said of their, as of writing, latest release, The Incredible Universe of Guru Guru. Mani is 85 years old and still shows no signs of slowing down.

The 80s are a particularly polarizing period of the band's output, though. 1981's Mani in Germani didn't sway the naysayers for their newer direction, new wave, you could say even, because that's exactly what the album opens with. This felt like a radical departure from the band's most well known sound of fuzzy, spacey, krautrock jamming, even more so than the already widely denounced disco and funk leanings on Hey Du. Of course, to claim that Guru Guru ever compromised for the sake of selling records is plainly ridiculous, Hey Du still ends with the 10 minute Atommolch, and in the case of Mani in Germani, Jupiter God and the entire B side are much closer to the aforementioned well known sound (and executed quite well, at that), but that didn't stop the complaints. "Sellouts!", cried the listeners who wanted to stand for some kind of underground conformity, rather than just enjoy good music, even though Guru Guru faded into obscurity by this point compared to their heyday. One can only count their blessings for the fact that Mani didn't care about money nor fame, whether it came from the mainstream or the underground.

And then after Mani in Germani, came the subject of today's write-up, released on Biber Records, a small label in a village on the outskirts of the German Black Forest (seriously). Adding to the aforementioned confusion regarding the authorship of this album, the line-up is not identical to any other Guru Guru release, consisting of a strict quartet, with no members besides Mani himself being credited on any of their other releases, with the exception of Kraan guitarist Peter Woldbrandt, who additionally plays bass on this album, as well as being credited with just guitar on the 1975 revival album Mani und seine Freunde. The other 2 members are keyboardist "Lord Patexx", supposedly an alias for Thomas Balluff, of Exmagma, and "Chowmeier", a supposed alias for Philipp Meier, who played bass under the nickname Maggi for the band Fuckin' Gute Bürgerband [sic], who shares bass and guitar duties with Peter, and vocal duties with Mani, who is also credited here with the standard nonspecific drums and percussion.

The music itself, unfortunately, remains woefully fragmented to us mortals. There is one rip I could find, which I have put for download here. The problem becomes immediate when comparing the length of the mp3 files to the tracklist:



Ouch. Some of the tracks are notably longer, some notably shorter, and of special note is Sweet Lion, which is almost two minutes shorter on the rip. Believe me when I say I have searched quite extensively on the web, as available to me, and all of them seem to be taken from the same shoddy source: loaded with crackles and the worst amount of needle skips I have ever encountered. Part of me wonders if this is a manufacturing error, or the lucky soul who somehow got a copy of this is just really bad at ripping vinyl.

Nevertheless, what we do have is a "diamond in the rough" situation in our hands. It starts off with the title track(?), a vaguely bluesy piano ballad, with... something, in German, on top, before kicking into a punk number, of sorts, a first for Guru Guru, which the band keeps stopping and starting, before shifting into a great guitar solo, that's immediately interrupted by the track ending. None of this mentions the needle skips, which aren't as severe as the rest of the album, all things considered. Der König ist Goldrichtig is more in the Neu Deutsche Welle style, though not exactly employed in the same way as on Mani in Germani, which can also be said of Miniskus, Schleimemeier, and Losverkäufer, which reeks particularly of the period, in a good way, though, while tracks like La Bimba and Sweet Lion veer into an endearing silliness, with the former being a Reggae song, just like Rangga Rannga, and the latter largely uncertain due to the amount of skipping. Much of the rest is in a more Jazz-Rock style, Reach on and Der Nestor particularly sounding like something that could appear on previous Guru Guru albums, and if the oft-repeated line of "Dance Of The Flames is Mani trying to be Mahavishnu Orchestra" is true, then Panzerfaust is more like him trying to be Steely Dan, which again I mean in a good way. All of this, of course, is under the assumption that the labeling from the rip is correct, which in all honesty I doubt.

The whole way the album is packaged, including the crudely (but again, endearingly) drawn cover art, paired with the music itself, fills me with an odd sense of anemoia. It feels like Guru Guru/Mani's attempt at integrating with the sunny, optimistic, and cheery musical zeitgeist of the period, and the resulting music resembles a lo-fi snapshot of it, covered in grain. Does it make it sound dated? A fair bit, yes, but that's both not inherently so bad, and it adds an undeniable charm to the proceedings, it's just that the charm is largely imbalanced by how broken the only way to listen to it on the semi-open internet is.

Mani's own hesitancy to get any of the 80s Guru Guru albums reissued (the only one that got this privilege on a physical release is Mani in Germani, with Jungle being delegated to a digital reissue on Spotify and Amazon) has not helped in the search for this album, nor has it's price and rarity (the photo I got above is from a German eBay listing, where this LP sells for close to €150, without shipping of course). If anyone is intrigued by either my words or the rip I hyperlinked earlier, please contact me with a better rip: you can see how in the sidebar. Doesn't matter if it's your own or you got it god knows where, the quality is of course preferred to be as good as you can manage, me and the dozens of other 80s Guru Guru fans will highly appreciate it.