My Writing-Fu Skills Are No Match For This Album...

...because I'm at a loss as to how to describe it. It's great to encounter music that fits no known genre until you're the fumbling fool trying to review this 1993 release by German composer Helmut Neugebauer and his band Die Vogel Europas. But (*cracks knuckles*) here goes:

Mainly guitar and drums making a kind of fractured funk, like two Gang of Four records playing at the same time at 78 rpm...but with jazz sax that suggests a European Capt. Beefheart...er, more like a Raymond Scott/Carl Stalling cartoonish craziness...only with sampling and industrial-like sounds, but it's not industrial music, really....well, maybe in the Foetus sense, but it's kinda proggy, what with all the unusual time signatures and complex songwriting, only done more in the spirit of an exuberant Eastern European dance than some show-offy prog band...
I think I've embarrassed myself enough. But, hey, the Allmusic guy describes it as 'unclassifiable,' so there, it's not just me. He also says that "It's a classic and deserves to be heard by everybody."

Helmut Neugebauer & DIE VÖGEL EUROPAS - Short Stories


p.s.: Elliot Sharp plays on this album, I bet some of you have heard of him.

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