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Reviews

Dhope — Musical Exhibitions
(Garden of Delights CD 192, 1978/2021, CD / LP)

by Peter Thelen, Published 2026-01-31

Musical Exhibitions Cover art

Dhope was a group from Paderborn in Westphalia, Germany, that existed for a few years in the late 70s. Their only LP, Musical Exhibitions, is a certifiable rarity — only 500 copies of the original LP were produced, and they sells for around $800 on line if you can even find one. Fortunately, unless you are a collector of vinyl rarities, it can be had on this CD reissue on Garden of Delights for a fairly reasonable price these days. Before anyone gets the wrong idea about the band name, it comes from the phrase Deutsche Hoffnung (which translates to German Hope, sometimes abbreviated to D.Hope in Germish / Denglish), so the band was D.Hope, but eventually the period got dropped and they became Dhope; nothing to do with Dope. The band’s stock in trade is a hard rock sound informed by progressive tendencies, their lyrics are mostly in English, with a couple songs in German and two of the ten cuts instrumental. The band, for the purposes of this album, was a six-piece, with lead singer Thomas Haberland, keyboardist Niko Dragun, bassist Claus Peter, drummer Heiko Klingenberg, and two guitarists, Reinhard Hennecke and Erlend Luck. The band produced the album themselves on a shoestring budget — they asked Conny Plank to produce them, but they couldn’t afford his services, so they went DIY and released it on Harz Records. The lack of a top shelf producer certainly shows, as the sound leans toward the bottom end, though the excellence in the songwriting and playing is still very evident. The album opens with the three-minute cut “Monotone” then launches into the exceptional near-eight minute “Dream of Peace,” where the band’s progressive tendencies are strongly in evidence. “No More Troubles” features some great vocals and keyboards over a funky beat, approaching fusion at times. With its long instrumental intro, “Snowqueen” holds a lot of promise, while the instrumental “Aufbruch” that closed the original first side of the LP could have fit nicely in the Allman Brothers intrumental oeuvre. “Orientexpress” moves quickly into a powerful prog-rock mini-epic with plenty of Eastern influence, leading into “Do It Another Way” with its Procol Harum-like intro that gives way to a briskly paced verse-chorus structire. “Flying” offers a beautiful and catchy guitar-based instrumental number that shouldn’t be missed. Closing the album are “X-Ray” and the seemingly anti-war “Auf ein Wort Herr General” (“May I Have a Word, Dear General”), one of the songs with German lyrics, though mostly spoken. In all, Musical Exhibitions is an album of excellent songcraft and musicianship, though it suffers from demo-ish sound at times due to poor production. As always, the comprehensive backstory of the band in the booklet is nothing short of excellent.

Filed under: New releases, 2021 releases, 1978 recordings

Related artist(s): Dhope

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