Do you need boneheaded stomps replete with deadpan vocals droning on about modern living, and overlaid by soft, pearly grey washes and grinding, grizzly slabs of synth?
Do you need boneheaded stomps replete with deadpan vocals droning on about modern living, and overlaid by soft, pearly grey washes and grinding, grizzly slabs of synth?
(Diskob) http://www.konkurrent.nl
I’m a sucker for these kind of LPs; a SUCKER. Anything that sounds vaguely German and electronic is meat and drink at Incendiary. One day I’ll grow out of it and start growing vegetables and wearing clothes made of pulped waste, but UNTIL that day I’m going to carry on banging my fist along to fizzing, grinding tracks like the ones found on Trans Atlantik.
This LP really does have some corkers. The title track is the best Deustche rip off/Aunt Sally ever made. Want cliches? They’re here, but not that you care. Just enjoy the trip. The opener Zeitraffer is a brilliant tease; the mid-paced beat driving on the stripped-back, dry electro pulses and gestures. Throw in some whispered Deutsche vocals that don’t half nod to Kraftwek and the whole thing teeters on the edge of going somewhere bananas. Will it won’t it? That it doesn’t, and continues to plot a stately course is one of the track’s chief charms. Android folows a similar course; a sort of warped ‘n beefy Endless Endless that spins around as if it’s never going to stop.
We have some quiet bits that are, in some ways (ways I can’t really but my finger on) a bit odd or a bit forced, like Watch Me Grow, On A Spear, or Ostsee, but once you realise you’re strapped in on this flight, you can give them the space they need to do their thing. And they do form a very effective counterpoint to all that precision engineering.
But listening to this LP really comes down to one overriding concern. Do you need boneheaded stomps replete with deadpan vocals droning on about modern living, and overlaid by soft, pearly grey washes and grinding, grizzly slabs of synth? Then look no further than Android, Hoehenkammer, Konsumprodukt and the masterful Zukunft, a track which lays waste to everything in its path. Actually, Zukunft is an absolute bulldozer of a track, a sort of Leviathon that brooks no shit from anyone. It’s damned difficult to get round it.
Maler and Zeckenwalzer take things down a level and we can safely exit.
Phew!