“Immermannstraße” is the first video to a track from La Düsseldorf’s upcoming album Japandorf, showing footage of Klaus Dinger and his band on a 2006 boat trip on the river Rhine, around the Düsseldorf-Kaiserwerth area.
“Düsseldorf, du bist unsere Heimat” – Düsseldorf, you are our home – these were the lyrics on the 1976 debut album of NEU! successor La Düsseldorf, another great krautrock band born of Klaus Dinger’s genius. And this very home is also the location of Germany’s only Japantown, with Immermannstraße as one of its centres. Although being just a small minority, the Japanese expat community has been playing an important cultural and economic role in the Rhine metropolis for more than five decades.
In his search for a special collaboration with artists who all shared the same background, Klaus Dinger started an entire music project with artists from Düsseldorf’s Japanese “village”. As a vision of “the sound of the 21st century”, Japandorf began in 2000 and took seven years to perfect, with recordings in both the Düsseldorf studio and in Zeeland. Even so, “Immermannstraße” sounds quite like the old 1976 style, but that’s just fine. Good to know that even at the beginning of the 21st century, Klaus Dinger hadn’t lost anything of his multi-instrumentalist talents and driving “motorik” beat. What’s new is the extremely nice Japanese accent in the always somewhat angular German lyrics, giving the sound a very special touch. Like Damo Suzuki in Immermannstraße. Looking forward to hear the rest of the album!
R.i.p. Klaus Dinger, who passed away in 2008, shortly before the album was complete. The long awaited Japandorf will now finally be released on 25 March 2013 on Groenland Records.
F-Sky is a project by Berlin-based French artist François de Benedetti, who made this reverb-laden psychedelic trip of sound, somewhere between The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Koolaid Electric Company. One of the nicest new tunes in alternative music in 2012. Video edit by Adriano Coiso.
Manuel Göttsching, the man behind Ash Ra Tempel and mastermind of electronic minimal music, has been quite busy in 2012, the year that saw the 30th anniversary of his seminal classic E2-E4 and the reunion with Ashra to perform their 1979 album Correlations. Now, his plans for 2013 are Le Berceau De Cristal and The Private Tapes live on stage in Berlin.
About a year after their 2012 show at Berlin’s UfA-Fabrik area, the place where their Correlations album started, Manuel Göttsching will meet up there again with his bandmates from Ashra, Harald Grosskopf on drums and Steve Baltes, electronics, to perform parts of The Private Tapes in new arrangements, creative improvisations, and reprise. The Private Tapes is a six-volume collection of rare recordings from 1971-1989, and includes pieces by both Ash Ra Tempel and Ashra, as well as Manuel Göttsching solo work. It should not be missing in any serious collection, although it’s rather difficult to get, as all six volumes are currently out of stock. Besides, most tracks have never been performed live before, so the event will be a true premiere.
Although opinions differ on what exactly is “cosmic rock”, to most people it´s the label for Germany´s experimental, leftfield and somewhat spaced-out acts of the early Seventies. Ash Ra Tempel certainly belong to those who deserve this recognition most, a powerful outfit led by guitarist Manuel Göttsching, which at times also included Klaus Schulze on keyboard and drums.
Emerging at the end of the Sixties from the so-called “Berlin School” along with Tangerine Dream, Eruption, or Agitation Free, Ash Ra Tempel are probably the band that came closest to an atmosphere comparable to that of Pink Floyd. Like Pink Floyd (that is to say, their early Seventies’ Zabriskie-Point-Sessions-pre-DSoTM-bootleg version), their sound was both highly experimental and melodious, the kind of extensive “less-pop-more-art” explorations with the occasional warm blues-oriented elements that come from a talented and well-trained guitarist. In doing so, they created something sublime. Something that was more than the sum of its parts, transporting you to a deeper state of mind or a higher level of consciousness, just as you may look at it. Thereby the individual members modestly stayed out of focus. No one of them was a star of his own, although nowadays things may look a bit different.
Ash Ra Tempel´s albums, all of them remarkable and mostly psychedelic-oriented, belong to the most extraordinary records produced in that era, on either side of the Channel (or the Atlantic, depending on the point of view). Notably their self-titled debut from 1971 and their second album, Schwingungen, are key works both by the band and within the genre. After the end of the collaboration with Klaus Schulze in 1973, Manuel Göttsching moved on to new projects, among them his ambient-minimalist solo work Inventions For Electric Guitar, and, in continuity with that, a soundtrack to a more or less unknown underground art movie called Le Berceau De Cristal (1976), by French director and cinematographer Philippe Garrel.
Le Berceau De Cristal is, so to speak, the first album by Ash Ra Tempel “Mk II”, as for this purpose Manuel Göttsching was then joined by Lutz Ulbrich from Agitation Free, and the equipment was extended by Farfisa organ, synth guitar and rhythm computer. And even if it doesn´t match the brilliance of the early albums, it is remarkable all the same. As the oneiric backdrop to a weird, hallucinatory visual dreamscape, it´s one of those examples where sound and picture complement each other perfectly. But you don´t actually have to watch the film in order to get the music, and maybe that´s what makes a good soundtrack. Le Berceau De Cristal evokes its own otherworldly images that spirit you away to some state between dreamlike unreality and observant wakefulness, certainly best-known in the quiet, 14-min intro of the same name and the beautiful organ-driven L’Hiver Doux. A rhythmic texture similar to that of Echo Waves from Inventions For Electric Guitar can be found in most pieces, making the album gain momentum. It´s blended with the droning sounds of Silence Sauvage, forms the basic pattern of Deux Enfants Sous La Lune, and gives Le Sourire Volé a nature of escape, turning it into a shamanic flight of the soul.
And even if those tracks aren´t as innovative as Ash Ra Tempel´s First, the “Pink Floyd feeling” is still there, and, compared to Pink Floyd, Ash Ra Tempel have a major advantage: you can still see them live.
Manuel Göttsching & Lutz Ulbrich, Ash Ra Tempel live @t.b.a.
Those who went to one of their shows, and so took the opportunity to see that Dead Skeletons are really as cool as they sound, will certainly enjoy their upcoming single Buddha-Christ, out on 12/12/2012 on Fuzz Club Records & Dead Monk Records. Coming along with it is this really cool video. Obviously shot on the road, it shows footage of their past European tour, featuring an advertising column, the interior of a tram (probably German), a basement, an emergency exit, the platform of U-Bahn Berlin Nordbahnhof, a peacock painting, several skulls, Anton Newcombe, many autobahns, one wind farm, an airstrip, a goat, trucks inside a car ferry, and, of course, Nonni Dead. All this is highlighted by an exciting track of energetic motorik mixed with a dark, industrial sound. Dead Magick continued …
Wir haben Dienst. – We´re on duty. And if we´re nothing else, we´re on duty. So say the lyrics of Düsseldorf artist Nikolai Szymanski in Röhrentäler (yet another example for the city´s tradition of naming music tracks after machines, electronic devices, or other rather non-human objects), one of the electropop highlights on the debut album of his solo project Fanta Dorado & Der Innere Kreis. Röhrentäler begins quite monotonously, slowly working its way through the pipes and valves of its title, before it gains momentum as an accomplished pop song. And keeps amusing the listener with well-known German clichés: “Hast du die Akte dabei? – Have you got the file? – Wo ist dein Stromzähler? – Where is your meter?” And on it goes: “We want to label everything.” Today one less, since it´s Friday.
On the other hand, there´s the synth pop ballad Die Insel, where the artist addresses the dreams and yearnings of his overworked fellow citizens: “There´s a place in the world where you can find all that you´ve ever been looking for …” But no worries if you don´t understand German, since this latest output from one of Germany´s most innovative music capitals speaks for itself.
Nikolai Szymanski is a member of the Düsseldorf synth-pop-kraut-electro trio Stabil Elite, who´ve released their highly acclaimed debut album Douze Pouze earlier this year. Fanta Dorado continues in the same way: “arranged with the help of a Minimoog, an Oberheim Matrix 6, some tongue clicking, Roland drum machines, and wobbly guitars” (according to the record label), the current solo project, too, seems to have picked up all the city´s musical influences from the past and the present, and so has become another stylish blend of wave, electronic music, Neue Deutsche Welle, and synth pop. The cool, rhythmically elaborate intro Der Kreis, quite reminiscent of Kreidler, is already a perfect example. It´s followed by ten diversified pieces that range from excursions into the good old motorik to an extended research of the possibilities of synth sound. – Oh yes, and we still drive on the Autobahn.
Last but not least, Tachyonen-Mann deserves particular mention here not only for its musings about Life, Truth, and Everything (“Will the truth come to light? What difference does it make when all things happen at the same time? Where does the gestalt go when all is cold and dull?”), but for its high musicality (by the way, is it just imagination or do the first 30 seconds have a vague similarity to OMD´s MaidOf Orleans?), which makes it the album´s most brilliant track.
Fanta Dorado is at least an 8 out of 10, and another fine example for high quality pop music made in Germany.
Key Tracks: Röhrentäler, Tachyonen-Mann Label: Italic
CD / Download / LP Release Date: 22 October 2012
from their new album DEN (October 2012). The official video by artist Heinz Emigholz features pictures of Saipan island, where 30,000 soldiers died in July 1944 in one of the last battles between the USA and Japan. What the Japanese couldn´t hold militarily is now reconquered by nature, as shown tellingly in the footage that is also a part of the filmmaker´s latest project The Airstrip - Decampment of Modernism Part III , produced by Pym Films (spring 2013).
With Con3 , originally released in 1981, now comes the reissue of the late Conrad Schnitzler´s sixth regular, and probably most commercial, album. So, maybe this is the very occasion for those who have always found the works of this prolific experimental musician not easily accessible. Conrad Schnitzler, composer and concept artist, student of Joseph Beuys, founder member of the famous Kluster (with Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius) and the even more famous Tangerine Dream (with Edgar Froese and Klaus Schulze), creator of the legendary Zodiak Free Arts Lab in late Sixties’ Berlin, in short: one of post-war West Germany’s most important artists in electronic music avant-garde, had recorded countless solo albums – many of them only privately released, now to be re-discovered among his legacy.
Con3 was Schnitzler’s excursion into electropop, and his “examination” of the then upcoming German New Wave, the Neue Deutsche Welle (NDW). With Wolfgang Seidel, aka Sequenza, he programmed rhythm machines and sequencers, and so created a distinct mix that sounded a little like NDW, a little like Kraftwerk’s commercial successes, and very much like Schnitzler himself. You can even hear him singing on this record, something he had never done before!
Thereby the catchy Komm Mit Nach Berlin has lost none of its relevance, both in lyrics and musically, even after 30 years. Wer Sind Wir Denn and Seemannslied seem to have the typical “Düsseldorf sound”, Schnitzler’s hometown, although he lived and worked in Berlin. Das Tier is a great NDW tune, surely the original for many imitations yet to follow in the early Eighties. The quiet and beautiful Tanze im Regen was the ninth and last piece on the original album – with the reissue come six bonus tracks: four very interesting instrumental tracks, hinting at what was about to come in the experimental / electro / minimal techno department, as well as the alternative mixes of Seemannslied and Wer Sind Wir Denn.
Conrad Schnitzler was quite an idiosyncratic musician, associating with many prominent members of the Fluxus movement (although he never called himself a Fluxus artist) and performance art. His life’s work is not easily understandable, not even to music heads who are accustomed to a certain level. However, Con3 is great fun to listen to, and a suitable introduction. Highly recommended.
Key Tracks: Komm Mit Nach Berlin, Wer Sind Wir Denn, Tanze im Regen Label: Bureau B
CD / Download / LP Release Date: 19 October 2012
Photographer and photo editor Geoffrey Hiller has created Verve Photo to feature photographs and interviews by the finest contemporary image makers today.
