February 04, 2018

I.D. Company ‎– I.D. Company (1970, LP, Germany)

I.D. Company (aka "Inga Rumpf and Dagmar Krause Company") made an experimental album, crossing rock, jazz, ethnic and avant-garde musics, with Inga Rumpf handling the vocals on one side and Dagmar Krause the other.

Utterly schizophrenic in character, this krautrock masterpiece extends exploratory tendrils down two seemingly incompatible lines of investigation, each occupying one side of this LP and each fronted by a different powerhouse vocalist. Anyone initiated into the soul piercing hoodoo grammar of Dr. John's Gris Gris will find much to get emotionally wrung out over here, especially with Frumpy vocalist Inga Rumpf's uber masculine and completely wasted sounding vocals occupying center stage. Conversely, side B for much of it's length relinquishes warmth and happy wasted hoodoo vibes in favor of flinging you unceremoniously into a frequently harrowing psychic melee fronted by the hysteria tinged and Leslie cabinet shattered vocals of a young pre-Slapp Happy Dagmar Krause. Residual echoes of jazzy jamming cling to the edges of this amorphous febrile mass, but that only reinforces the deliriousness of the endeavour by offering the listener an olive branch only to yank the rug out from under your feet as you approach. Mutant Sound