Put it on and you know you're headed for Stuttgart. Brethren Ali and Basti Schwarz a.k.a. Tiefschwarz, known continentally and beyond for their remix work of artists like Kelis, Ultra Naté, DJ Hell and Spektrum, are out with a new album of their own work, a foray into insistent Teutonic technoid tropes with vocalisations that venture into punk, David Byrneville (courtesy vocal features Matty Safer, Ed Laliq and Chikinki) and plain old song a little syntactically misemphasised.
The production builds unapologetic classical synth into melodic structures (bleeps, stark leaps of tone) such as we know them from anything since Kraftwerk to the late-Eighties industrial club techno they inspired. Sometimes pulsing and pounding (see lovely synth work on 'Troubled Man'), it's a newfangled, retro-sounding dance affair, particularly on 'Damage', which features the bitter-sweet, disturbing lilt of Tracey Horn (whose dead-reckoning travel, I realise, must be what vocoders were invented in order for lesser singers to emulate). The eloquent 'Schmetterlingsflügel' ('butterfly wings') and 'Wait & See' draw home the much-abused trance and poppy techno offshoots that German electronica heads birthed, reared and then lost to tourist Hippodromes and polyphonic mobile hell.
Some high points are 'Original' (ft. Smallboy), 'Benedict' and 'Issst', the latter two thickly thudding instrumental tracks ideal for loud, late-night backroad speeding. All in all a working, personal, accessible album of modern electronic music (some call it Electroclash), a thinking man's techno with a buzz dark enough to stir even clinical melancholics into nodding relief.
~Tor Solberg
8.
