Camera - Radiate (Bureau B)

This is a review of a German instrumental rock band called Camera. 

 But allow me some set up.

First, about "electronic music." Trying to define “electronic music” as a genre is opening the door to a really messy room. And to parse it into infinities of sub-genres is only so helpful.

The origins of electronic music go back a century – to the Futurists, musique concrete, and a host of salon driven aesthetic movements, culminating in the post-WW2 flowering of the genre with composers like Stockhausen, Babbitt, Luening and Xenakis. Early experiments with tape manipulation evolved further with the introduction of the computer to composition and performance.

Of course the advent of computers in electronic music was relatively contemporary with the development of electronic amplification of the instruments central to blues, country, jazz and rock performance. This technically involved what academicians call “electromechanical sound,” a fancy way of describing what happens when you plug in guitars and keyboards. On the other hand, purely electronic sound is produced on devices like the theremin, synthesizer and computer, ‘instruments’ with less tangible acoustic predecessors.

These distinctions, while illustrative, don’t change what’s really a pretty blurry picture.

Nowhere is this more the case than with ‘Krautrock.” Once either an affectionate shorthand or dismissive epithet, Krautrock is now common language, describing a genre with origins in Germany in the very late Sixties and early Seventies. And it’s a genre that has proven durable. The core of artists who spearheaded the genre (Faust, Can, Ash Ra Tempel, Cluster, Neu, etc.) combined electric rock, electronic music, folk and classical influences, high art and pop, the atmospheric and the aggressive in fresh, influential ways.

Of course I pretty much eschewed it when it was first happening. I wasn’t wholly dismissive of the music by any means; it was just that the bits and pieces I heard by these artists didn’t grab me then. That and their hardcore fans were an annoying, proselytizing lot – that didn’t help. Sure, I got a kick out of Kraftwerk (can’t forget Kraftwerk), but not in the profound emotional or visceral way that I did from everything from Nick Drake to the New York Dolls.

I quite knowingly came to the music through the backdoor opened by David Bowie, His “Berlin Trilogy” (the albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger) from the late Seventies borrowed heavily from Teutonic inspirations. So, of course, did his productions for Iggy Pop – The Idiot and Lust for Life, especially the former. And Bowie was collaborating with Brian Eno, who recorded with Cluster and had immersed himself wholly in the idiom. Then British bands, including Wire, P.I.L., and Joy Division/New Order flew their Krautrock colors. Hell, it was everywhere and undeniable.

To be sure I’m still catching up. I Enjoyed the Neu! reissues on Astralwerks, released in 2001. Investigated Cluster a little more, dug a lot of what I heard. So, okay I’m no expert, but I’m learning.

I know enough to know that I dig Camera. 

Camera represents a new generation of Krautrock, endorsed and supported by guys like Michael Rother (Neu!, Harmonia) and Dieter Moebius (Cluster, Harmonia). They’ve developed a reputation in Germany for so-called “Krautrock Guerilla.” This means, basically, that they often show up in public spaces, unannounced and jam out. On their debut album Radiate you can hear how these compositions took root in improvisation. Their sonic approach essentially falls on one of two sides of a balance between driving, machine rock and serene, soundscapes; the latter sounding essentially like what that stuff on “Music for the Hearts of Space” would sound like if it wasn’t so soporific. 

Radiate more or less alternates the rockers and the sound scapes, but even the relative sleepers have their convulsive moments; “Rfid” breaks (at 4:45) from a soothing mix of synthesizer washes and peeling guitar into a “Venus in Furs” drone that powers the rest of the track. “Villon” evokes Talking Head’s “The Overload,” guitarist Franz Bargmann playing elegant, vaguely Arabic lines with a tone borrowed from the halcyon days of psychedelia (think: Country Joe and the Fish’s Barry Melton) while drummer Michael Drummer’s tautly tuned tom rolls and gong-like crashes offer a meditative alternative to album opener, “Ego,” with its driving rhythms, the band here as textured as Tangerine Dream, but as insistent as the Stooges. 

Camera has a deft way of mixing up sounds. Timm Brockmann’s keyboards are chiefly responsible for the band’s minimalist, but assertive themes. For every sheer electronic sound, he mixes in lots of other textures, like the harpsichord-like tones of “Ausland” or the Fender Rhodes style playing on “Utopia is.” Guitarist Bargmann rarely overplays. His lines are measured, sometimes reminding of the great Norwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal, other times of David Gilmour, Lou Reed, even the Edge (after all Brian Eno’s work with that band was firmly stamped with his Cluster/Connie Plank experiences). But Bargmann is also responsible for layer upon layer of textural distortion, harmonic, brash but lush, never stock in trade fuzzbox distortion.

“Soldat” pursues a frankly rock agenda, more blues based than the rest of Radiate or most music in the genre. Bargmann’s guitar sound is dirtier, the groove borders on something like Brooklyn’s Endless Boogie, even featuring a breakdown to drums, synth bass and handclaps.

The epic track on Radiate, at 10:57, is “Lynch,” a sound journey that moves from lumbering, atmospheric themes to “set the controls” (Pink Floyd) dramatic tension, then to a movement evocative of John Coltrane’s “Acknowledgement” from A Love Supreme, as Bargmann takes Trane’s place in his austere, but blistering fashion. “Lynch” is Camera’s tour de force, eleven minutes crammed with all of their signature motives.

I recommend Radiate generally, but especially for a late night drive. It’s combination of driving rock grooves and lunar atmospheres is perfect midnight ride music. Camera delivers everything that a band like Radiohead suggest, but fails to deliver – and without all that bobblehead warbling. 

Reverberating: 8.6