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If you've been paying attention, you'll know that my recent playlists have had a heavy Krautrock feel about them. Please note that the term Krautrock is not meant to be offensive. It's just like Britpop, but I can understand if it is taken as an insult. Let me tell you: far from it. Germany has produced its fair share of innovative and interesting rock. Just think of the groundbreaking Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul and Can from the seventies. Add to that all four owe a great debt to electronic pioneer Karl-Heinz Stockhausen and we's talking serious stuff here. However, it's been a bit quiet on the Germanic scene for awhile. There's been some bad pop - eg the tragic Milli Vanilli - and who could forget "Neun und Neunzig Luftballoon". I guess one difficulty has been the impenetrability of the German language for anyone from west of the Rhine, east of the Oder and south of the Danube. Meanwhile, German youth seems to consume tons of heavy metal and crap Brit prog-rock with great gusto. Well, there's been a bit of a mini-Renaissance of late. There's some fine bands coming from Neue Deutschland. I mentioned Mouse on Mars in a recent review. Serious voltage there. On the more traditional four piece band front, groups like Laub (a three piece actually), Couch and Kante have picked up the pace.
Meanwhile, Kante have been on post-rock
101, dropped the vocals, digested the grooves, added a wicked Hammond-esque
organ to boot. Zwischen den Orten paints a brighter picture
until we hit the final track "Gospel" a drawn-out track
featuring not-so-simple repeated guitar phrase and in-between organ
chords backed by spartan bass and brushes. Alles ist klar. On Fantasy, Couch prove that they
passed post-rock 202 with more clear nods to the Tortoises of this
world. As the Sunday Times so aptly puts it: " they smog up
the room delightfully with clattering percussion, sublime drum'n'bass
beats ..." und so weiter. I strongly suggest that you check
out "Gegen Den" which has such striking similarities to
Fugazi's "Arpeggiator" and Don Caballero's "Bringing home
the groceries..." that I segued them on tape for the drive into
work. I just got hold of Freischwimmer
(literally "free swimmer"), a Kitty-yo
compilation which features the muscular strutting and posing of Surrogat
(self-parodying title "rocker" - ha! HA!), sub euro-pop from
Raz Ohara, Gonzales' rub-a-dub, a slice-a-roni of shoe-gazing in the
form of Kerosin, Schwermut Forest and their post-rock stylings, Rod
Argent rip-offs Go Plus ("Alles is so gut" goes one lyric!),
Deutscher trip-hop von Tarwater, jazzy To Roccoco Rot and the
aforementioned Couch, Laub and Kante. Highly recommended sampler. I'm not forgetting other bands which are making an impact like Kreidler (just got hold of their latest), Karamosov (jazzier Anglo-German fourtet) and Silo (okay that's a cheat cause their Danish). My latest wedge of CDs includes an
excellent Peter Thomas two CD set. CD 1 is remixes by the likes of
Stereolab, John McEntire, High Llamas and Saint Etienne. CD 2 is
compilation of hits from the meister of German B-movie music.
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| © 2001 etc. pete, innit. all wrongs reversed. if you really wanna copy some of this shit, send me an e-mail - pjmcclym@erols.com |
The
fabulous Antye Greie-Fuchs leads Laub, a young Berlin outfit which in
'99 laid down a fine long player unter anderen bedingungen als liebe
(under different conditions than love). Laub have absorbed
much of what is good from the European electronic tradition, Bjork and
the US post-rockers against a distinct, musical Germanic bleakness.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but perhaps it's the German vocals.
My German is rusty, but the words here seem to have a definite heart
rending feel. There's a lot of heart in Antye's crooning.
The title track, a poignant and haunting love song, is worth the price
of admission. It's over 12 minutes of hypnotic gurgling
swathes of electronics, smooth horns, industrial back beat and Antye's soto
voce talk-sing. 
Kitty-yo.int EFA 55207-2
