Blonde, Pretty and Very, Very Good: Ada, Blondie
Ada: Blondie (Areal, 2004)
People in Cologne (and all of Catholic Rhineland, for that matter) are known as jovial, talkative and voluble to excess. In this, they differ from, indeed are the opposite of, people in Hamburg (and all of Northern Germany, in particular the coastal areas), who have and cultivate a reputation for being brusque and reticent. Here one hears the complaint that Rhinelanders want no conversation partners, but victims for their verbal torrents. Being, by temperament, if not by birth, somewhat of a North German, I tend to sympathise.
Cologne has, of course, quite a number of things that speak for it, too. The soot-covered Cathedral, Kölsch beer and, at Carnival time (in February), it is an absolute must for all friends of elaborate dressing-up and inebriated antics and frolics in public, in the streets, quite literally. This last is quite a serious tradition, as anyone who has tried to reach business partners in Cologne by phone during that time well knows: it is impossible!
More of these merits and virtues can be found in detail in any tourist guide to the city. What I have not found mention of in these books is the fact that Cologne is, at present at least, Germany’s capital (perhaps together with Berlin) for excellent and innovative electronic music of all sorts, both in the sense of artists and labels.
(I’d like to mention that it is also home to affectated, pretentious, self-centered and self-referential (but, alas, authoritative and well-informed and thus unavoidable) SPEX magazine (www.spex.de). A British band whose name eludes me as I write this ‘dedicated’ them a song a few years ago, titled ‘SPEX Is A Smug Bitch’. SPEX being what it is, took it as a compliment.)
Areal (www.areal-records.com) is one of these labels. Intended, in the words of its subtitle, as a home for ‘advanced tech-electronic minimalism’, it was founded by Michael Schwanen (a.k.a. Metope), Sebastian Riedl (a.k.a. Basteroid) and Mathias Klein (a.k.a. Konfekt/Schorf). Mr Schwanen moved to Cologne from Friedberg, a small town (or village, rather) near Frankfurt am Main in Hesse (another state in Germany whose people are known as jovial, talkative and voluble to excess. In addition, they are quite fond of apple wine.) in 1998. In Friedberg he had a project named ‘Lava Lounge’, this project had a vocalist named Michaela Dippel, who, after Metope’s departure, sang for a guitar pop band for a short while and moved to Cologne herself in 1991. She took with her a small Korg Electribe sampler forgotten at her place by a friend.
She was fascinated by the sampler and the possibilities it offered and intensely experimented with it. In this she was much encouraged by Areal’s Basteroid and Metope, who then issued the first two tracks Miss Dippel ever produced as a 12 inch on their label.
Now, Michaela Dippel is not a name to make your name with as an artist. It so happens that Miss Dippel has a predilection for vampires and zombies and thus for John Sinclair. ‘Ghost Hunter John Sinclair’ is a weekly pulp magazine (currently at issue 1371) very popular in Germany (with a circulation that makes the editor of many a high-brow magazine drool) artlessly written by Jason Dark (that’s Mr Helmut Rellergard, who also has over a dozen other nomes-de-plume). The series is, needless to say, replete with lycanthropes, Transylvanian artistrocrats on a hemoglobin diet, zombies and the malevolent undead in innumerable manifestations. The Sinclair stories are also available as books and radio plays on cassette tape and CD, one of which is about an asylum for the blind, inhabited by a number of blind zombies (how’s that for preposterous?)! This ‘Blindhouse’ is supervised by a matron named Ada, who keeps said zombies in a constant supply of fresh meat.
Miss Dippel took the name of the supervisor and the inspiration for her first 12 inch, ‘Blindhouse’ (b/w Lucky Charm), from the play’s music, which was issued as Areal’s tenth publication, produced on the Korg Electribe sampler mentioned above. Later a friend sent her an article on the entertainer Ada Lovelace, whom Miss Dippel professes to admire. This led to ‘Lovelace’ (b/w ... And More), her last 12 inch prior to ‘Blondie’, her first full length album, issued on October 18 on Areal.
And what an album it is! It was selected ‘Album of the Month’ by both de:bug magazine (www.de-bug.de) and SPEX magazine, and though I hate to admit that I agree upon anything with the latter, I have to make an exception in this case.
‘Blondie’ opens with ‘Eve’, which, at just under seven minutes, is a perfect example of Ada’s astounding abundance of ideas, expressed in a number of shifts, surprises and twists. The first two minutes remind me of a club version of a Kylie Minogue song- if Miss Minogue were a talented artist instead of the ludicrous, trivial inflatable doll that she is- but then the bass kicks in and Ada piles idea upon idea (a harpsichord and much elaborate percussion included).
‘Cool My Fire (I’m Burning)’, number two, is a lovely straightforward House track with an element of Dub, which I like very much.
Ada sings on six of the album’s ten songs, backed by her good friend Caroline Bausum, who also contributed the (banal and fatuous, in my view, so much so that they make me wince) lyrics to ‘Livedriver’ and ‘Who Pays the Bill’, the latter of which she sings alone. ‘Who Pays the Bill’ is reminiscent of ‘(I Wish I Had A) Wooden Heart’ by David Holmes’ The Free Association, and Miss Bausum’s voice and technique, in particular, remind me of Petra Jean Phillipson on that song. Despite this lyrical shortcoming, ‘Who Pays The Bill’ is one of my favourites on the album, with a very nice stylistic detour in the middle and multilayered vocals. And, as a friend, to whom I voiced my lyrical objection, put it: ‘What do you expect? It’s not a poetry contest, you know.’ He’s right. The song also reminds me very strongly of Super Nova’s 1999 track, ‘23. Juli’ (to be heard on the compilation ‘Vienna Scientists II- More Puffs from Our Laboratories’. And, poetry contest or not: for sheer stupidity, the lyrics to ‘23. Juli’ have yet to meet their match): both feature a very nice doublebass.
About the vocals, Ada said in a recent interview that it had not been her intention to produce an album with this much of them, due to her doubts as to whether such tracks would be played in the clubs, but concluded that, in her opinion, the vocals turned out to fit in extremely well. I agree.
Of the album’s three instrumental tracks, ‘The Red Shoes’, ‘Our Love Never Dies’ and ‘Les Danseuses’, the first is the most straightforward and the one which I like best.
‘Blondie’ includes two cover versions, Everything But The Girl’s ‘Each and Everyone’ and ‘Maps’, originally performed by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. A cover version is ideally both an interpretation and a tribute and Ada manages both beautifully. In the case of ‘Each and Everyone’ I cannot help but think that this is exactly what a more inspired Tracy Thorn and Ben Watt would have sounded like in 2004.
Five Stars, definitely.
There is another Michaela in Cologne who produces excellent electronic music (which has been described, among other things, as Acid-Pop). This is Michaela Grobelny, a.k.a. M.I.A., the partner (in life and label) of Falko Brocksieper (who needs no introduction, I think). The label in question is Sub Static (www.sub-static.de), which released, in autumn 2003, her excellent debut album, ‘Schwarzweiss’ (vinyl only). Apart from close ties to a particular label, M.I.A. shares Ada’s predilection for Techno with vocals.
M.I.A. is not, (please not) to be mistaken for the unspeakable posers Mia. (yes, that dot is an intergral part of the band name, they insist), prominent representatives of the Berlin Electro-Clash-Punk-Hype, now mercifully defunct and passé (even though some bands of the genre do not seem to be quite aware of this and are still active). I think that three facts suffice about this band: 1) The singer calls herself Mieze (German for kitty or pussy (both as in ‘cat’)), her understanding of gender-irony 2) The band consider the name of their record label, ‘Respect or Tolerate’, a profound statement both political and social and 3) Mia-with-the-dot-at-the-end-of-their-name actually took part in the national contest to represent Germany at (now hold on to your seat, please, dear Gentle Reader) the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 in Istanbul (thereby placing themselves firmly in the same league as such Epitomes of Awefulness and Vulgarity as Guildo Horn and The Orthopedic Stockings)! And they lost (Guildo Horn and his band won, at least)! Mia. even ranked behind Scooter!
Scooter’s frontman, the incredible H.P. Baxxter (Hans-Peter Geerdes to his mother), has recently read a selection of Thomas Bernhard’s short pieces on CD (published by Dancefloor label Overdose in Frankfurt). I’d like to hear Kid Rock with Jonathan Franzen and Pamela Anderson with Susan Sontag, please.
Cologne has, of course, quite a number of things that speak for it, too. The soot-covered Cathedral, Kölsch beer and, at Carnival time (in February), it is an absolute must for all friends of elaborate dressing-up and inebriated antics and frolics in public, in the streets, quite literally. This last is quite a serious tradition, as anyone who has tried to reach business partners in Cologne by phone during that time well knows: it is impossible!
More of these merits and virtues can be found in detail in any tourist guide to the city. What I have not found mention of in these books is the fact that Cologne is, at present at least, Germany’s capital (perhaps together with Berlin) for excellent and innovative electronic music of all sorts, both in the sense of artists and labels.
(I’d like to mention that it is also home to affectated, pretentious, self-centered and self-referential (but, alas, authoritative and well-informed and thus unavoidable) SPEX magazine (www.spex.de). A British band whose name eludes me as I write this ‘dedicated’ them a song a few years ago, titled ‘SPEX Is A Smug Bitch’. SPEX being what it is, took it as a compliment.)
Areal (www.areal-records.com) is one of these labels. Intended, in the words of its subtitle, as a home for ‘advanced tech-electronic minimalism’, it was founded by Michael Schwanen (a.k.a. Metope), Sebastian Riedl (a.k.a. Basteroid) and Mathias Klein (a.k.a. Konfekt/Schorf). Mr Schwanen moved to Cologne from Friedberg, a small town (or village, rather) near Frankfurt am Main in Hesse (another state in Germany whose people are known as jovial, talkative and voluble to excess. In addition, they are quite fond of apple wine.) in 1998. In Friedberg he had a project named ‘Lava Lounge’, this project had a vocalist named Michaela Dippel, who, after Metope’s departure, sang for a guitar pop band for a short while and moved to Cologne herself in 1991. She took with her a small Korg Electribe sampler forgotten at her place by a friend.
She was fascinated by the sampler and the possibilities it offered and intensely experimented with it. In this she was much encouraged by Areal’s Basteroid and Metope, who then issued the first two tracks Miss Dippel ever produced as a 12 inch on their label.
Now, Michaela Dippel is not a name to make your name with as an artist. It so happens that Miss Dippel has a predilection for vampires and zombies and thus for John Sinclair. ‘Ghost Hunter John Sinclair’ is a weekly pulp magazine (currently at issue 1371) very popular in Germany (with a circulation that makes the editor of many a high-brow magazine drool) artlessly written by Jason Dark (that’s Mr Helmut Rellergard, who also has over a dozen other nomes-de-plume). The series is, needless to say, replete with lycanthropes, Transylvanian artistrocrats on a hemoglobin diet, zombies and the malevolent undead in innumerable manifestations. The Sinclair stories are also available as books and radio plays on cassette tape and CD, one of which is about an asylum for the blind, inhabited by a number of blind zombies (how’s that for preposterous?)! This ‘Blindhouse’ is supervised by a matron named Ada, who keeps said zombies in a constant supply of fresh meat.
Miss Dippel took the name of the supervisor and the inspiration for her first 12 inch, ‘Blindhouse’ (b/w Lucky Charm), from the play’s music, which was issued as Areal’s tenth publication, produced on the Korg Electribe sampler mentioned above. Later a friend sent her an article on the entertainer Ada Lovelace, whom Miss Dippel professes to admire. This led to ‘Lovelace’ (b/w ... And More), her last 12 inch prior to ‘Blondie’, her first full length album, issued on October 18 on Areal.
And what an album it is! It was selected ‘Album of the Month’ by both de:bug magazine (www.de-bug.de) and SPEX magazine, and though I hate to admit that I agree upon anything with the latter, I have to make an exception in this case.
‘Blondie’ opens with ‘Eve’, which, at just under seven minutes, is a perfect example of Ada’s astounding abundance of ideas, expressed in a number of shifts, surprises and twists. The first two minutes remind me of a club version of a Kylie Minogue song- if Miss Minogue were a talented artist instead of the ludicrous, trivial inflatable doll that she is- but then the bass kicks in and Ada piles idea upon idea (a harpsichord and much elaborate percussion included).
‘Cool My Fire (I’m Burning)’, number two, is a lovely straightforward House track with an element of Dub, which I like very much.
Ada sings on six of the album’s ten songs, backed by her good friend Caroline Bausum, who also contributed the (banal and fatuous, in my view, so much so that they make me wince) lyrics to ‘Livedriver’ and ‘Who Pays the Bill’, the latter of which she sings alone. ‘Who Pays the Bill’ is reminiscent of ‘(I Wish I Had A) Wooden Heart’ by David Holmes’ The Free Association, and Miss Bausum’s voice and technique, in particular, remind me of Petra Jean Phillipson on that song. Despite this lyrical shortcoming, ‘Who Pays The Bill’ is one of my favourites on the album, with a very nice stylistic detour in the middle and multilayered vocals. And, as a friend, to whom I voiced my lyrical objection, put it: ‘What do you expect? It’s not a poetry contest, you know.’ He’s right. The song also reminds me very strongly of Super Nova’s 1999 track, ‘23. Juli’ (to be heard on the compilation ‘Vienna Scientists II- More Puffs from Our Laboratories’. And, poetry contest or not: for sheer stupidity, the lyrics to ‘23. Juli’ have yet to meet their match): both feature a very nice doublebass.
About the vocals, Ada said in a recent interview that it had not been her intention to produce an album with this much of them, due to her doubts as to whether such tracks would be played in the clubs, but concluded that, in her opinion, the vocals turned out to fit in extremely well. I agree.
Of the album’s three instrumental tracks, ‘The Red Shoes’, ‘Our Love Never Dies’ and ‘Les Danseuses’, the first is the most straightforward and the one which I like best.
‘Blondie’ includes two cover versions, Everything But The Girl’s ‘Each and Everyone’ and ‘Maps’, originally performed by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. A cover version is ideally both an interpretation and a tribute and Ada manages both beautifully. In the case of ‘Each and Everyone’ I cannot help but think that this is exactly what a more inspired Tracy Thorn and Ben Watt would have sounded like in 2004.
Five Stars, definitely.
There is another Michaela in Cologne who produces excellent electronic music (which has been described, among other things, as Acid-Pop). This is Michaela Grobelny, a.k.a. M.I.A., the partner (in life and label) of Falko Brocksieper (who needs no introduction, I think). The label in question is Sub Static (www.sub-static.de), which released, in autumn 2003, her excellent debut album, ‘Schwarzweiss’ (vinyl only). Apart from close ties to a particular label, M.I.A. shares Ada’s predilection for Techno with vocals.
M.I.A. is not, (please not) to be mistaken for the unspeakable posers Mia. (yes, that dot is an intergral part of the band name, they insist), prominent representatives of the Berlin Electro-Clash-Punk-Hype, now mercifully defunct and passé (even though some bands of the genre do not seem to be quite aware of this and are still active). I think that three facts suffice about this band: 1) The singer calls herself Mieze (German for kitty or pussy (both as in ‘cat’)), her understanding of gender-irony 2) The band consider the name of their record label, ‘Respect or Tolerate’, a profound statement both political and social and 3) Mia-with-the-dot-at-the-end-of-their-name actually took part in the national contest to represent Germany at (now hold on to your seat, please, dear Gentle Reader) the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 in Istanbul (thereby placing themselves firmly in the same league as such Epitomes of Awefulness and Vulgarity as Guildo Horn and The Orthopedic Stockings)! And they lost (Guildo Horn and his band won, at least)! Mia. even ranked behind Scooter!
Scooter’s frontman, the incredible H.P. Baxxter (Hans-Peter Geerdes to his mother), has recently read a selection of Thomas Bernhard’s short pieces on CD (published by Dancefloor label Overdose in Frankfurt). I’d like to hear Kid Rock with Jonathan Franzen and Pamela Anderson with Susan Sontag, please.
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