After leaving his old band
Kraftwerk
during the seemingly endless work with
The Mix Karl Bartos started this project
with Lothar Manteuffel from Rheingold, a band I've heard only very little
from but seemed quite Krafterk inspired. Bartos, like Wolfgang Flur before him,
left due to the dissatisfaction over not making much progress, working a lot
without getting anywhere (you can hardly say that Kraftwerk has released a lot
of material these past ten years although they've been working all the time).
"It's like I have this Jumbo Jet in the garden, but it never takes off. So, I'd
rather go and have a little Messerschmidt or Stuka and do it myself". The
comparison Bartos made is quite good if you compare the two bands.
The sound of this album is really
not that different from that of The Mix; this album perhaps has richer sound
textures and a little poppier (and un-poppier) songs. It's all super-synthetic,
as you might expect from an ex-Kraftwerker, with lots of synthetic voices
and strange sounds. Lyrically, it's often quite ironic and amusing, sometimes
sharp and critisising, but without the subtleties that made Kraftwerk's lyrics
so clever and ambigous.
'TV' is a quite slow and soft track about a man watching TV, from war on the news
to commercials and old black-and-white Chaplin films. It's probably the track
with the most subtle sarcasm on the album, and the sampled commercial voices and
TV show hosts enhance that impression. 'Show Business' is a bit poppier, and
with sharper lyrics about (you guessed it) show business and how you have to
change yourself to have the right 'image', how to get famous. A funny little
line is one stolen from the old Kraftwerk song
Hall Of Mirrors and modified to
"dive into the looking glass, just like the greatest stars". Seeing is believing.
In 'Kissing The Machine' Andy McCluskey of
OMD helps out with the vocals,
and though I'm not really too fond of his voice it fits rather well here. The song
is a slow pop song, it sounds a bit like something off the OMD album 'Sugar Tax'.
The lyrics are about a man who falls in love with his machine ("you've come
a long way from just TV"), a loving machine that does what he wants. Virtual sex?
'Lifestyle' is one of the most aggressive (pop) songs on the album; the theme
from 'Show Business' is taken a bit further, and you have to change your lifestyle
to have all the 'right' things, the right car, listen to all the hip music,
know the right people. There are lots of vocal experiments in the song, little
manipulated sound snippets, like phonetic samples, that are cut and pasted
in curious ways, almost creating a language of its own. I don't really
see what this has to do with the lyrics, but perhaps there's a hidden message
somewhere that I can't hear. Musically, the sounds are quite sharp and the tempo
is high, the beats are hard (well, for this album at least). I get the feeling
Bartos isn't too fond of imagery (much like myself). 'Crosstalk' is a bit slower
and heavier, a bit funkier, but still with some sharp synth sounds. The melody
in between the monotone mechanic noises seems divine, like a great release
when it finally comes, heavenly in contrast to the bleeps and blips. The lyrics
are about communication and understanding, sorting things out. This track also
more or less concludes the synth pop part of the album.
'Information' is more of a Kraftwerkian techno trance song, with synthetic
voices repeating the old hacker phrase "information wants to be free" ad nauseum.
It's quite fast and bouncy, and very repetative. In a good way. If you're in the
mood. 'Esperanto' is a lot slower and heavier, and quite funky. More synthetic
voices, claiming esperanto is the universal language, then proceeding to
say something in that language. My guess is that it's something like "esperanto
is the language of music" or perhaps "both esperanto and music are universal".
There are some more phonetic experiments here as well, like in 'Lifestyle'.
'Overdrive' is more uptempo again, a bit like the techno trance of 'Information'
but a little poppier. Synthetic voices repeat the words "Underground, Overdrive"
in the chorus, whatever that's supposed to mean. Either way, I love that synthetic
voice. And those (distorted?) harsh synths are lovely too.
To be brief, it's a very good album that reminds me more than a little of
Kraftwerk, but it's different. More layered and less minimalistic, more direct
and less subtle, poppier and more extreme at the same time. If you like Kraftwerk,
this might very well be an album for you. Do some research into either this
or Komputer. Or maybe Flur's new project Yamo,
which I have yet to hear. Or how about that new Kraftwerk material due out late '97?
