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Anaconda - Machine - 09-Dec-07 06:25 PM
This is a strange release with an interesting B-side. First of all, it doesn't have the quality you'd expect from Luden Barnemünde & Johanna Cosmo Fetsch (Fritz Weber & Ulrich Franke) - in terms of production quality this is nowhere near the Teknó La Drôga maxi they released one year later as Negrosex. And the sleeve hinting at some industrial influences is misleading as well...
Machine is on the housier, happier side of techno and uses the moaning & groaning of a lady named Mrs. TNT. Messerschmitt as its motif. 'Ooh, it's nice'. Yeah, but not more than that. A nice feature is the unmentionned (short) third track on the B-side which consists solely of the moaning samples.
Speedway 69, however, comes as quite a surprise with its pounding breakbeat. It's a dark, very sparse tune, a bit on the acid tip, fast for its time with 134 bpm, and it sounds very, very British, and not German at all.

Erasure - Am I Right? - 02-Sep-07 05:26 AM
Mute Records manage to pack 4 tunes on this 45rpm 7" at reasonable sound quality - thanks to Vince Clarke's typical soft sound.
Carry On Clangers is the most interesting piece to me here, as it represents Clarke's take on Bleep Techno. A nice bassline and a quirky and catchy bleep succession make this a fun tune. It's far less pumping than most techno tracks of the same period, and that's alright, yet a more club-friendly remix of it with harder basskicks could have been a nice idea.
Am I Right is a well-crafted, airy ballad, yet an unobvious single choice from the Chorus album. The other two tunes might have just missed the cut for the album, or maybe they were also considered too sexually explicit. Both are not far off the album's standard, Let It Flow being a melodious tune on a soft electro breakbeat, Waiting For Sex being the only one of the four tracks on this EP clearly aimed at the clubs, and the only one with a strong 80ies feeling.

Depth Charge - Bounty Killers - 05-Jul-07 06:44 AM
What makes this record interesting is its progressive production style. Bounty Killers sounds quite singular for 1989 and more like one of the forerunners of a downbeat/dub/trip hop/big beat style which blossomed only in the late nineties. Breakbeats had hardly ever sounded so slick and big before 1989, and I'm sure J. Saul Kane intended Bounty Killers to be a pure sonic trip.
The bad thing about the record is that under the impression of the sounds, it was forgotten to include some interesting musical elements. The bassline seems to be the same as in Bizarre Inc's Technological, and I assume it's sampled from there; the same for Death Is Ma Name which is a remix very similar to Bounty Killers. The Bit In The Middle is not more than the sample from the beginning of the original mix, whereas the Measly 1000 Bucks Version at least comes up with a different, lower bassline. What I find particularly annoying is the "wrong" use (in all mixes!) of the vocal sample which was later used in Blue Room by The Orb: Whereas The Orb place the sample in a rhythmic context so that it absolutely fits the tune, Depth Charge just trigger it at the beginning of the bar which leaves it completely unconnected to the beat.
A plus is that whereas the A-side was pressed on 45, the B-side was pressed on 33 but sounds almost as good and a bit more entertaining at 45 -8.

Stone Roses, The - Made Of Stone - 14-May-07 02:27 PM
Guernica is one of the most interesting production experiments I've heard. Guitar tracks running backwards are layered over guitar tracks probably running forward, though it's hard to tell in the mix (at least parts of the guitar was taken from Made Of Stone on the A-side of the record). Even some of the vocals give the impression that they were recorded backwards, even though the words are always comprehensible. The song has no drums, but is very dynamic; to me, listening to it feels like standing in a strong wind with the band playing quite some distance away.
The A-side songs are both much more conventional, though with a big difference in quality: Made Of Stone is a classic and one of The Stone Roses' best and possibly their most beautiful song, whereas Going Down is an unimportant, slightly below-average indie tune.

Touch El Arab - LRK - 29-Apr-07 02:12 PM
This is a very entertaining and at times startling, yet a bit of an uneven album. 'Live In Cash', 'Shalom', and 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' are extremely catchy industrial pop songs. The latter has a decidedly hardcore techno-like sounding riff in the chorus, even though in 1988 hardcore was not yet around.
Other bands would probably fill an album with tunes following the same formula, but Touch El Arab pursued a broader, more experimental approach, with variable results. There is their 1987 hit 'Muhammar' (with additional sound effects during the verses, but faded out early), which is the only representative of Touch El Arab's synth-pop sound on 'LRK'. Still the tune fits into the album well enough. 'Le Droit Chemin' however is a beautiful chanson, but is really too far off the album's general sound.
'Militant', 'Kerbala', and 'Heldentod' are punky tunes, not too glorious, but not bad, with 'Militant' showing some influence by fellow Swiss industrial heroes The Young Gods. 'Resozismus' is a bit pointless; I can only understand it as a statement about the band not being leftist, because that's what some might have thought after Touch El Arab had released the anti-nazi song 'Sag Mir Wo Die Nazis Sind' as the lead track on their first EP. But unlike the boring collage of samples of 'Resozismus', 'Sag Mir Wo Die Nazis Sind' was another of Touch El Arab's infectious pop songs.
One song left, the best of the more experimental ones in my opinion: The tragicomedy of 'Wahrer Arbeit, Wahrer Lohn', with a beautiful melody, lush church organ solo, and humorous lyrics about the sad end of legendary Rübezahl.

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