Review: Zentrifugal - Tat Oder Wahrheit (1999)

"This CD has great songs. The only thing is that none of the songs are over 4 minutes."
- Amazon customer review of Zentrifugal's Poesiealbum

"What are they talking about?"
"Representing."
[10 minutes pass]
"So what are they talking about now?"
"Still representing."
- conversation between Bastian Böttcher and Kevan Harris during DJ Loris Negro's German hip-hop set @ WNUR, early 2000

Despite the above review's brevity, a careful parsing of its text does reveal a truth about Zentrifugal's first outing, namely that it's more a disparate collection of songs than a coherent album. Knowledge of the duo's roots, particularly MC Bastian Böttcher's origins in spoken-word poetry, leads me to shy away from Poesiealbum's more conventional start-the-party brand of German hip-hop and toward their second album, the subject of this review, which embraces spacy atmospherics and a jazz-inflected groove. (Okay, it's trip-hop. I LOVE trip-hop.) Particularly excellent is "Das Suesse Leben," which overcomes a questionable start of sexual female cooing for an evocation of an expatriate muttering to himself over an Esthero song. In case you're wondering, that's a good thing.

Zentrifugal's defining characteristic is Böttcher's use of the German language, an aspect I am woefully unqualified to analyze. I will say that even listeners who don't know a lick of German, such as myself, can appreciate the smoothness Böttcher brings to his flow using a tongue that normally sounds harsh and jerky, and in which ten-syllable words are common. The hook of "Sommersonne," for example, contains a continuous string of almost whispered on-the-eighths rhyming and thrills like the chill blast of morning air when one opens the front door of an overheated apartment building. Tracks with guest MCs, such as the titular cut, only serve to highlight the difference in Böttcher's approach; while they shout to get their point across, he lays back, relying on an impeccable sense of feel and timing, and giving his vocals an unmistakably musical appeal.

The group's frankly bizarre [PDF] January 2000 appearance in what seems to be the German ConAgra's in-house newsletter translates Tat Oder Wahrheit as "Deed or Truth," which also doesn't mean anything to me. But there's less lost in the translation here than one would assume. Any proponent of the voice-as-instrument school of thought would readily agree that this album succeeds solely on those merits. Regretfully, I do not know of any plans for a third album, or if Böttcher and Negro even still work together. Here's hoping.

Review: Magneto - Sounds Like Space (2006)

My paths crossed with Magneto when I played bass for Maria Photopulos at the Comet Tavern in Seattle for a show put on by the suddenly and surprisingly defunct ROCKRGRL Magazine's Music Conference on November 11, 2005, a night that also featured Third Grade Teacher from L.A. and Hazard County Girls from the recently Katrina-ized New Orleans. Indicative of the genreless new millennium (or indifferent booking by event organizers), the mood of the night swung viciously from Maria's soft/loud folk-rock to 3GT's virtuosic but campy vamp-punk to Magneto's energetic shoegazing to Hazard County Girls' something-to-prove math-metal. It's hard to gauge a band's success by audience response at a gig like this because so often the crowd is a mixed bag of fans of different genres, and public behavior etiquette prevents all but the most uninhibited concertgoers from expressing their approval or disapproval too vocally.

Long story short, we were obviously the best band there, but Magneto came in a close second. One song in particular really caught my ear, enough to download their CD Sounds Like Space from iTunes upon returning home and play it on repeat for the following week. A quick glance at my iTunes Play Count for the albums belies my assertion in the previous sentence: I've played the first song, "ISA," over 30 times, and the rest of the album 7 times. This, of course, was the song from the show I really liked, enough to cover it at a show in January, and you know what they say about imitation. I was in the musical and personal doldrums at the end of '05, and this song had a perfect chorus, with vocal harmonies, inventive drum fills, layers of buzzing guitars, and lyrics about finding clarity that I just couldn't get enough of. (The chord change at the bridge irks me for some unknown reason hidden deep in my psyche, but playing the song out forced me to accept it.) The guitar work on the intro is especially impressive, and having watched it played live flawlessly by singer/songwriter Lian Light only heightens my appreciation of it.

I know this is supposed to be a review of the whole album and not just one song, but my personal reaction was so strong to "ISA" that I think of the rest of the album as a group of good, but not as catchy, gauzy-guitar alternative/indie rock songs. The album drags after the opening salvo through the middle; "Wake Up" has a chorus that unfortunately keeps reminding me of Mariah Carey's "Can't Let Go," and "When I'm Not Alive" employs a xylophone for a sort of slow-surf pop ditty. Uptempo numbers "Machine" and "Up At Night" bring the catchiness and energy back closer to the end. The sequencing makes me think of Sounds Like Space as a good comedown album for the drive home after a concert, the post-show rush ebbing into ruminative late-night postulates on everything.