Herbstwind (Autumn Wind)

Fehlfarben were one of the most impressive bands in the German punk years. Formed in Düsseldorf in 1979 by members of local punk bands like Mittagspause, DAF and Der Plan after they came back from a trip to London where they saw The Teardrops Explodes. And they started something new - they combined the rough sound of punk with German lyrics. Their first album Monarchie und Alltag is still a classic and the song Paul ist tot a highlight from these days. I always had a fondness to this band and saw them several times during the last decades. But sadly they made never a record that was that successful like their debut. More than 30 years ago they released Xenophobia an album that had class and style because they moved ahead from their early sound and moved to a different kind of sound. More guitar riffs and partial with reduced speed but added with cryptic lyrics and political statement they made in 2012 a retro sound that could lead into future.

Fehlfarben - Herbstwind

Diabolo

 

Once again Adam over at Bagging Area was a bit faster than me to feature a new superb release. But it doesn't matter to feature Gabe Gurnsey's new album a second time at this little place in the internet. Diabolo his second album is a hybrid of many of his influences and marks a fusion of Simple Minds, Suicide, DAF, Detroit techno, deep house and Eurythmics. And with the vocals of Tilly Morris she adds the spirit of Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder to their sound. Nothing more or less than an album from another great Manchester band that will be played at my place more than one time.

Synthesist

A few days ago I got the news that Harald Grosskopf's album Synthesists from 1980 was re-released as an anniversary edition. For this reason I searched my collection because I am sure I owned a vinyl copy long time ago. Sadly I couldn't find it any more. Probably it one of those record I lend an never got back. Grosskopf is one of the forgotten pioneers of Krautrock, played drums with Ash Ra Temple, worked a lot with Klaus Schulze and session musician for several untold bands of the  NDW in the early 80's. Finally he arrived in the ambient scene to release an album from time to time. His songs mostly have everything Krautrock and kosmische Musik stands for. Steady rolling drums prepare the easy synthesizer escapades by Grosskopf. Another great re-release I didn't expected.

Harald Grosskopf - Synthesist

This edition features also various cover versions of his songs. One is done by Kurt Dahlke aka Pyrolator founding member of DAF, Fehlfarben and Der Plan - all pioneers of new German music in the late 70`s.

Pyrolator - Synthesist

Another version was done by Prau Frick, a Berlin based musician and producer. I think I said it before. You can recognize a good song by it's cover versions.

Paul Frick - Synthesist

Time For A Few Days Off

My company finished their new administrative building in the suburb of Stuttgart these days and all of the 500 employees have to move to there in the next to weeks. It will be open-space office over three floors and many of have to say good bye to our small bureaus. I  don't know what I have to expect of this new era of working so I decided to leave for two weeks and move my body back to Sri Lanka again to avoid the stress of changing the place and come back when the removal is finished. When you read this words I will be on my way and come back at the end of the month. Until then some EBM from the early 80's. See you back in a few weeks.

The Cassandra Complex - One Millonth Happy Custo
Meat Beat Manifesto - Radio Babylon
DAF - Der Mussolini

Something Obscure On Thursday

If I think about Japanese music first thing that comes up was J-Pop a very special genre of chart orientated music. I remember this kind of music when I visited Japan seven years ago. Listening to radio stations or going for music TV you will always see this crazy dressed kids moving to just the same sound. After listening to a few songs I couldn't here any difference. But always played loud so that you feel like being in patchinko hall (it's like an amusement hall filled with one arm bandits and the music played in the background was like on an Motörhead concert). The other side of Japanese music is a sophisticated one, played by bands like Yellow Magic Orchestra. Otherwise there is a big heavy metal scene over there.

I got the news that a female Japanese artist released a new record after a longer time of absence. Hiroki Moritani aka Phew started in the late 70's when punk reached Japan and everyone was possible to start a band of his own. Aunt Sally was famous over there in these days but to be honest I've never heard of them before. Very soon she started to walk on her own paths. What means that she decided to go a more avant-garde way. She collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto and he showed her the way to Cologne. Her first album was recorded in Conny Plank's studio and produced by Krautrock legends Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit which also played on different tracks. It is a different kind of listening to this psychedelic inspired sounds and Hiroki's voice but the often I listen to the more I like.

A few years later she returned to Cologne for her second record now collaborating with artists from Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft and Einstürzende Neubauten.

Public Beer Fest in Stuttgart

This evening I join my co-workers for an evening I am afraid of. 20 persons come together for a very popular beer-fest at our place. A lot of tents filled with people dressed like Bavarians drinking large beer-mugs and eating fried chickens. Later when they were drunk they step on their benches, sway to music, the arms linked with the people to the left and right. Looking at these scenes I feel ashamed for them. The music the bands play is far away from the music I listen normally. It is decadent and entertainment for the masses. But sometimes you have to join the colleges for a couple of hours to have a good time for business sake. If you want to see Germany's darker, drunken side - go there.

. 

Not to leave you in a mess - here is a classic of early dance floor music. Decades ago but still a great song:

D.A.F. - Der Mussolini

Indie Scene 1980

Back in real life after my military service and going to work as a regular employee in my job in a bank. I found my peace of mind spending eight hours in the office to hang around with my pals in the evening. It was also the days we formed a football team sponsored by the owner of the pub we hang around. This pub was hardly frequented especially on weekend. In the early 80s there are only two ways to serve music to your guest. Either you play a tape or you switch on the radio. So the idea grew that me and some friends will DJing on the weekends. And from then on I used to walk into the pub on Friday or Saturday with a wooden box full of records playing them to the audience. I remember some unforgettable evenings in these days. Looking back to the music I think a lot of classic songs were released. It's only a short list but man I love this songs.

D.A.F. - Kebabträume
Modern English - Gathering Dust
Nightmares in Wax - Birth of a Nation
Spizz Energi - Where's Captain Kirk
Wah! - Seven Minutes To Midnight
Woodhead Munro - Mambo Jumbo

The Foreign Correspondent - Stories About German Rock Music # 28

Robert Görl, Gabi Delgado-López, Kurt Dahlke, Michael Kemner and Wolfgang Spelmanns formed in 1979 a band that made history. Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (or only DAF) was known as the pioneers and inspiration of electro-punk, electronic body music and house music. Their synthesizer bass-lines were also a kind of blueprint of the later acid house music. Deeply based in the late 1970s Düsseldorf punk scene they created their on do-it-yourself thing. Very new was that they used mainly synthesizers instead of classical instruments. Also their songs are very different to the ones that played in this scene. Based on a constant rhythm they put a bass-line to push the song forward.

They are till this day probably the only ones which accommodated not only dictators, but also the Messiah in a pop song: They sang in her biggest hit about 1981 the lines "dance Mussolini, and then the communism, and now Adolf Hitler, and now Jesus Christ". The republic stood on the head: Two musicians gave concerts on which one was hidden behind a technology and keyboard tower and the other in the stage edge German slogans nagged in the mike whose provocation degree reached his high point with the hit single "Mussolini".

They pull their interest in musical energy and the joy in provoking from the punk movement. When Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado become acquainted in 1978 in Dusseldorf, the music bacillus has struck them already both. Though the Görl born in 1955 is not yet a member of a volume, however, can look back at a classical education in the inhabitant on the jazz college of music in Graz. Delgado, three years younger, is Spaniard by birth and also eager follower of the growing English punk wave. The meeting place of the hour for the new punk scene of Düsseldorf is the Ratinger Hof. There some of the first German punk groups already appear like Charley's Girls, Male, ZK and Mittagspause, from which to itself later among other things the Fehlfarben which form of croup and Die Toten Hosen. After a short time Dahlke was substituted by Chrislo Haas on keyboards when he moved to Der Plan. 

The quintet also wants to break out spatially and, hence, decides to move in the punk metropolis London. There is a risqué step for five impecunious Jung's musicians who know the English scene up to now only from magazines. However, already after few club shows Daniel Miller discovers the gang and binds them as the second Act to Fad Gadget to his young courage label. There appears in March, 1980 the single "Kebab dreams" and in August with the "little ones And The bad persons" the second DAF album which is at the same time the first courage album publication. A successful starting signal for during the following years as a pointing the way setting up electronics label.

Although on the "Die Kleinen und die Bösen" still guitar and bass are for hearing and the tape attains her pioneer's status only with the following album, the electronic store which soon characterises the tape becomes evident already here. There comes a cover which provides with his Soviet propaganda motives just in England for some sensation, particularly as it comes of a German volume. However, DAF still sound organic enough to go as a pregroup with The case on tour. After bassist Kemner who leaves the troop already before the album admission and joins in Germany to the false colours Haas also has enough of the wild life on the island and founds with Beate Bartel (Ex-Mania D.) the Liaisons Dangereuses.

Some of the songs Which Mussolini („dance Mussolini“), for example, the homoerotic piece of Der Räuber und der Prinz (the robber and the prince), Greif nach den Sternen (grabbing after the stars), die Götter sind weiß (the gods are white) or Ein bischen Krieg (a little war) were textually provoking. Suitably to the songs was also her image. Just Mussolini and her appearance in the leather outfit and short, shaven haircut as a kind „Germanic counterpart of Grace Jones“ introduced reproaches in them over and over again to be fascists. Also the texts didn't shrink back which before worn vocabulary from hit kitsch, home films and NS mythology , did not strengthen this reproach. DAF have never defined her political position in the media clearly. They mentioned merely that her stylistic range reached „at least, from the Anarcho-Skin to disco Nazi“ and that they are „simply too with relish for fascists“.

It's a band you ought to listen to - real pioneers in their genre.

Enjoy and have a good weekend people.

DAF - Verschwende Deine Jugend (Waste your youth)
DAF - Die Götter Sind Weiss (The gods are white)
DAF - Der Räuber und der Prinz (the robber and the prince)
DAF - Kebabträume
DAF - Der Mussolini

Rebel Yell: Is he really coming back again???

I thought that this criminal has gone forever. But nowadays I read the more and more Italians will vote him again. What the hell is going wrong in Europe? Is it possible that a corrupt politician who was judged as a criminal can enter the political stage again? Do the Italians have no other opinion that an 87 year old man who's favorite interest are young woman and his football team (making money is due to him). I don't know what to say - just shaking my head and giving me one more drink. Therefore I found a hommage to the classical record from DAF - Tanz den Mussolini. You can see all that no need politicians round here.