There’s not enough trumpet in music nowadays, something the brilliance of the opening track firmly re-adjusts. “Le Coeur Léger, Le Sentiment D’un Travail Bien Fait” is a collaborative with FaUSt that gets Jean-Hervé Péron giving it the Reeves and Mortimer pub singer swerve to some trilobiting tendrils of tuneage.
Couldn’t have wished for a better introduction to this new slice of the pie from Station 17, the rock and electronica collective’s first release for Bureau B. Quite a star-studded event it is too, what with Andreas Dorau‘s poppy muskets, SchneiderTM, Günter Schickert ,a gorgeously groovesome Pyrolator – blimey, it’s like a who’s who of the German underground that doesn’t fail to satisfy.
The root always pulsating positive, florin-fluxing your senses in scorchy, kilter-catapulted goodness and plenty of shuffling shoe action. The chorusing softness of Andreas Spechtl on “Dinge”, the brim-bubbling euphorics from Pyrolator on “Über Der Stadt”. Günter Schickert ‘s motorik mirrors on “Der Schimmelreiter Rückwärts” are also great, but that Harald Grosskopf and Eberhard Kranemann track “Ein Knall” is definitely one of the album’s jewelly nobles. A lovely slice of adrenalised electro that sunset-screams “Die polizeiiiii!” to a rugged rouse of rioting colour. A marathoned marvel that chews into your sofa-dwelling fat, smashes the lethargic in a scintilla of pleasing zoomatics. Angling for something more psychedelic and experimental, Datashock‘s cross-pollination on “Zauberpudding” is one of Blick‘s more sprawling affairs to which Schneider TM reels things back in on “Die Uhr spricht”. A choice cut of (alternate) shopping mall ambience that glints a sideway grin as it nibbles bizarrely at your ears like a tutu(ed) hamster.All in all, an uplifting listen that majestically ends on the butterscotch transits of Ulrich Schnauss‘s “Sternenteleskop” as he autographs the autobahn in the soft splash of his keylined headlights. If you’re still desperately waiting for spring to happen, feast on this for a poignant reminder.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
