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.
