A Very Special Album
J. K. Weston | Baltimore, USA | 05/07/2010
(5 out of 5 stars)
"A Very Special Album.
Führs & Fröhling were an early German Prog Rock group, a guitar and synthesizer duo, classically trained, playing music that might later be called new age or space music or progressive or symphonic rock or art rock, but really wasn't quite like anything else, including their former band, SFF (for Schicke, Führs & Fröhling), with the drummer Eduard Schicke. Between 1978 and 1981, they released 3 albums, this one, 1979's Strings, and in 1981, Diary. Their music is lush and romantic, especially on this album, and sounds to me like the outdoors. Ammerland is not a rock Beethoven "Pastoral" symphony, but has something of the spirit of that and other pastoral works. As well as being a great album at home on the stereo, it is a great album out driving on country roads or among lush scenery. I wish they had recorded more than their three albums, but I am glad to have the three that they did. (There is a 4th, live album, recorded, it sounds to me, by an amateur at a live concert. It is disappointing in sound quality, but does have a number of tracks not recorded elsewhere and is worthwhile getting if you really like their other albums, and want to hear a few more of their compositions.)
But this album has something else that makes it very special.
This was my first SuperBass album and still one of only two I know (The other is the Phillip Glass album, Orion, which I have also reviewed on Amazon). If you know of others, please leave a comment on this review. Yes, there are lots of albums with some deep bass, but not like this one. There are some that have occasional low notes or occasional big bass drum hits or, in the case of the Telarc 1812 Overture, cannon shots that go very deep into the bass, but this album has significant music that goes deep into the bass and loudly--and that is quite a rarity. The final track, Ammernoon, has a tune played in low C, D, E, and F. These notes have frequencies of 32.7, 36.7 41.2 and 43.6 hz and I think I've heard an incidental low B, at 30.8 hz in the mix. If your speakers don't go that low (and most don't) you'll still hear the tune, because of its overtones in the 65-88hz range and other higher overtones, and this is still a great album without the bottom octave bass. But if your speakers have flat frequency response in the bottom octave, from 20 to 40 hz--actually you need to extend that a little higher up to about 45hz--you will hear the tune in its fundamentals of astonishing power. Played on a subwoofer like the Bob Carver's Sunfire True Subwoofer with the crossover set to 40 or 45 hz and with regular speakers turned off, for most of this album you will hear little or nothing, an occasional stray note or a phrase here and there, until you get to the last track. And then you will hear this nice little tune, quite loud. If you play this on ordinary speakers, the vast majority of which don't have much bass down at 60 hz and those that do usually roll off pretty rapidly somewhere around 40 hz or a bit higher, you will never experience the sheer power of this last track.
I think that one reason this album is not more widely known is that most people don't have speakers that will allow them to hear the music that is there on the last track. I was lucky. When I bought the LP in the late 1970s my speakers were 4 Dynaco A-50s (yes, I had quad). These are large, full range speakers with a somewhat warm and romantic sound but they sound great on classical or rock music. There is a gentle rise in the bass with a peak at around 60 hz with a gentle dropoff below, but at 40 hz or so the sound intensity levels are still comparable to the sound intensity levels at 80 to 120 hz and higher. And there is still fairly significant output in the half octave from 30 to 40 hz, so when I put this album on, I could hear and feel the deep bass in the last track. A few years later, I bought a pair of Magneplanar speakers and the ONLY thing I didn't like about them was that they didn't have the deep bass I was used to. So I bought a custom designed crossover with a crossover point of 32 hz (crossover point experimentally determined by listening and measurement) and that, combined with a pair of Dynaco A-50s and a Hafler 500 watt amplifier, gave me a stereo pair of subwoofers that I could turn on when appropriate for the music which gave me flat frequency response from about 25 to 40 hz and a rapid rolloff outside of that frequency range. These mated very well with the Magneplanars, which were pretty flat from about 40 hz up, and they continue to serve me well. And using them as dedicated subwoofers with the Maggies, this last track sounds even better than it did using the Dynaco speakers full range. But I suspect any good subwoofer with a flat frequency response down to 25hz or lower will reveal power of the Ammernoon track.
I own the older 2002 issue of this CD, as well as the original LPs of all three Führs & Fröhling albums. Ammerland has been one of my favorite albums since the first time I heard it. I have no reason to think that the new CD pressing is inferior to the old and it might even be better.
Philip Glass : Orion"
