OFF: Germany again...

[Jon Jarrett]

On Thu, 9 Sep 2004, Nick Medford wrote:

> On Wed, 8 Sep 2004 10:05:26 +0100, Jon Jarrett
> <jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> wrote:
> >
> >        Am I remembering right from old Freak Emporium catalogues that
> >S/T's first release was called _Catatonic Airkraut_? I've always wondered
> >what they were like just on the basis of that splendid title
>
> There's an entire S/T concert available for free download at
>
> http://www.faust-pages.com/st.durmentingen.download.html
>
> Includes a cover of "Silver Machine" incidentally. Quality is a bit
> bootleggy, but listenable enough. I think they're an excellent band. They
> have a rather nifty website at
>
> http://www.get-happy-records.com/st.htm
>
> which also has more MP3s.

        So we have a band who cover `Silver Machine' and `Woooly Bully' in
their live set, issue an EP with the title of _Catatonic Airkraut_ and a
follow-up called _The Difficult Second Album_, and whose promotional goods
include a pizza which they then ate and mark on the website as "no longer
available". To say nothing of the foundation legend I just about managed
to piece together from the German which rivals the one in the _Doremi_
remaster for inspirational claptrap (this is good, by the way), and that
that live set opens with a ten-minute track called `Story of a
Long-Distance Flight'. I did rather feel as if someone had got themselves
a time machine and gone back to 199-whatever and founded a krautrock band
expressly designed to get my attention. They must have a time-machine,
because I'd forgotten `Woolly Bully' completely for some years until
hearing it in a club a scant few days before Nick posted this message and
remembering how great it was.

        Kind of inevitable that the music disappoints given the level of
self-marketing there; all quite clever and spooky but no interest in the
rhythms at all. Remarkably full sound for a two-piece anyway, but both
the basslines and guitar parts quite wearing after a while, or so I
found. I had to listen to the concert several times before I decided this
mind, and I imagine I will again. Their recorded work is definitely still
on a to-investigate list.

        I decided that my final summation of the band based only on that
concert was that if Steve Albini had, in some parallel dimension, been
born instead to German hippies, somehow escaped his rage against digital
media but not the fascination with novelty sleeves, and then one day
somehow heard some Big Black on the radio (yes, I see the basic conceptual
problem here but bear with me), then that might explain S/T. But as this
hasn't obviously happened, I'm at a loss to explain them any other way.

        But, but, if you go and have a crack at that concert, you have to
agree with me, when they wrote `My New Mobile' they were clearly
channelling Bob Calvert. If _Test Tube Conceived_ had been written in 1995
not 1985 that song would have been on it.

        Anyway! I was supposed to be doing something productive I'm
sure. Yours,
             Jon

ObLP: Hawkwind - _Zones_
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)