Page 8 -The Michigan Daily - Monday, September 16, 1991
Kraftwerk
The Mix
Elektra
No other band has been more in-
fluential in shaping the hearts and
minds of today's synthesizer-
techno-industrial musicians than
Kraftwerk. 21 years ago, German vi-
sionaries Ralf Hutter and Florian
Schneider began a love-affair with
music and technology that blessed
the world with synthetic music.
They are probably the most sampled
band ever. You've heard them a mil-
lion times on the dance floor, on the
radio, in your sub-conscious and at
the beginning of "Sprockets."
After a five-year silence, Kraft-
werk has released The Mix, an
album composed of their old mate-
rial that expresses the group's con-
tinual fascination with computers,
cars, keyboards and robots. All 11
tracks were re-mixed with added
improvisations, new sounds and
'90s-style drum tracks. Hutter and
Schneider fleshed-out their once
minimalist sound, making some of
their new mixes comparatively
lush. This is not to say that Kraft-
werk merely brushed off some old
songs and gave them new beats in an
attempt to gain radio popularity.
Instead, they assembled a fine
collection in their original musical
style that should bring joy and ec-
stasy to all Kraftwerk-lovers.
"Pocket Calculator" is Kraft-
werk's classic computer sound with
a new, driving dance beat and a
really infectious keyboard. The song
becomes typically Kraftwerkian as
the singer describes what it's like to
play music on his computer (which
is probably the only thing these
geeks ever do). One of the best songs
on the album is "Computer Love," a
song about a guy who sits around
calling up computer dating numbers
he sees on TV, (we can't tell if he
has a lust for technology or for hu-
mans.) This song is pretty New
Order-ish in its style, and actually
has some beautiful melodic lines;
it's probably the most surreal and
dark song on the collection.
Kraftwerk expresses its love for
machines and motion with repeti-
tive but mesmerizing rhythms, an-
gular sounds and regimented me-
lodies. The new version of "Trans
Europe Express" starts out fa-
miliar, then rides through two vari-
ations called "Abzug" and "Metal
on Metal." They attempt to repro-
duce train sound and motion,
producing a sort of an "ode to mo-
mentum." The result is a driving,
sparse, hypnotic soundscape, with
lots of metallic samples and re-
peated themes that create a subtle
driving force.
Lengthwise, a few of the songs
tend to overstay their welcome, and
a couple grow quite repetitive after
Subvert Blaze/
Playmate
Japan Bashing, Vol. 2
Public Bath
Total testosterone-fueled boo-
zer/bloozer/non-loozer metal meets
estrogen onna cybercrunch, capped
off with an accelerated just-keep-
hangin'-on power ballad. Two bands
from Japan. One seven inch. This is
Japan Bashing, Vol. 2, which gives
the West a taste of J-Rock in an
Osaka (as in Osaka Greasy
Truckers) frame of mind.
Side One showcases Subvert
Blaze, a group of long-haired, bell-
bottomed, anti-war pig supernauts
who drop the bomb on Seattle. They
do a good job, considering their vi-
sual peacenik status (the tallest
Blazer sports some sort of peace
shirt on the back sleeve). "Butterfly
(Away Mix)" non-anthemically
points the way to the post-
Ozzy/Sabbath revival that will
soon be upon us. If that's what
you've been waiting for, and you're
too into "hard" rock to listen to
Loudness but you can't handle the
pure metallic mastery of Ruins,
then I guess you don't have to wait
any longer. You're welcome.
Playmate spread themselves
across side two with two songs.
They infiltrate the post-SST output
of Sonic Youth with some Iron
Women Sabbafuckery on "Upside
Down." Following this comes
"Life Is Never Too Short," the
power ballad mentioned earlier.
Playmate fills that "all-female
jockette, gypsy, biker, girl next
door" niche that's been vacant since
the girls in the Facts of Life decided
against going "secular" and form-
ing a post-no wave band.
Japan Bashing, Vol. 2 was re-
leased by Public Bath Records (P.O.
Box 2134, Madison, WI 53701), a
record label most likely named af-
ter a Shonen Knife song. If you can't
swipe a copy of this record from the
karaoke machine at your local non-
sushi bar, deal direct with the greasy
truckers who run one of America's
premiere J-Rock labels.
- Greg Baise
BOOKS
Continued from page 5
yet they're utterly fascinating.
We've all encountered stories of
husbands and wives rooted in alu-
minum-siding hell who have spon-
taneous mid-life crises while mak-
ing jello molds. And yes, Beattie's
book is full of infidelity and
marital collapse. But her subtly
intuitive treatment of relationships,
a quality for which she's been
hailed, assures that nothing about
these stories is pat.
Steady undercurrents play on the
reader's subconscious, holding the
stories aloft. As a character's train
of thought meanders through the
day's activities, the story title
lingers in the reader's mind, and it
isn't until the story ends that the
impact of the title hits. In
"Honey," an eerily evil honey jar
encrusted with bees is a physical
manifestation of the deceit between
a wife and her cuckolded husband. In
"A Windy Day at the Reservoir,"
the cold, grayish image of the title
lurks in the corners of the average
suburban settings.
Each of the stories practically
aches with the discontent that per-
meates its characters' lives.
Emotions are sandwiched between
the things that these characters have
to do when they get out of bed every
day, and somehow this makes their
impact all the stronger. Beattie
writes in "What Was Mine": "She
served us iced tea with big slices of
lemon. She brought out guacamole
and a bowl of tortilla chips. She had
called me several days before to say
that Herb had had a heart attack and
died."
Most of the stories are brief - a
moment of a character's life
snatched away for the reader's bene-
fit. The book's title story weaves
like a drifting conversation. It's
subject, a man reminiscing about his
mother's lover, is unsettling, leav-
ing you wondering where the char-
Ann Beattie, whose latest collection of short stories is called What Was
Mine, still hasn't lost her '60s idealism (or bad hair-do).
Kraftwerk
a few listenings, but overall this al-
bum is a good choice for those who
groove on Kraftwerk, or for the
uninitiated who wonder what they
are all about. Kraftwerk is not a
band for everyone: if you are look-
ing for a Depeche Mode/Front 242
sound-alike, you may prefer to look
elsewhere. As a longtime Kraft-
werk fan, I found The Mix to be a
refreshing break from the current
name that sample" trend in pop
music. Kraftwerk, once at the
vanguard of modern music, has now
stepped back to put their work into
the context of everything that they
they have influenced.
-Andrea Kachudas
acters will go from here. In this
way reality is distorted, just as it is
when characters have boring lives
that slant a bit toward the bizarre,
such as the Welcome Wagon Lady
who goes crazy with resentment
when her prey won't let her through
the door in "The Longest Day of the
Year," or the couple obsessed with
perfection and duck decoys in light
of the wife's mastectomy in "A
Windy Day at the Reservoir."
"Home to. Marie" matter-of-
factly depicts a wife, Marie, plan-
ning a fictional dinner party and
then leaving her husband right be-
fore the "guests" are meant to ar-
rive. "I'd like you to see what it's
like, to have food prepared... and
then just to wait. To wait and wait.
Maybe this way you'll see what *
that's like," she says. In the after-
math, Marie's husband sits down to
a meal of hors d'ouvres with the
party's caterer and she tells him
kinky stories about her lover. The
narrator's experience melds grace-
fully into the caterer's, their pain
intermingles and, instantly, there is
a bond between strangers. This iden-
tification carries over to Beattie's
readers, making What Was Mine an
anthology of insights that are both
painful and artistically brilliant.
-Elizabeth Lenhard
CHAPTER
Continued from page 5
thought we might as well play gui-
tar with some sort of purpose.
"So we booked a rehearsal room
and just started playing some covers
and we got a drummer (Ashley
Bates) and a bass player (Russell
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11
Barrett) and we weren't doing it for
any particular reason except the en-
joyment of doing it, until someone
stuck their head in the door of the
rehearsal room and said, 'Hey, do
you want a gig?'
"It's kind of happened really
naturally. We never had any kind of
aims from the start except what we
wanted to do musically. We never
said we want to be big or, you know,
we want to be in the charts or any-
thing. It's just happened as it's gone
along.
"We don't really feel a part of
the music business... the words, mu-
sic and business seem pretty incon-
gruous to us anyway. Or at least we
don't want anything to do with
them. But unfortunately, after you
get to a certain point, you've gotta
kinda play the game, in order for
people to hear what you're doing,
You need
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you know, so it's one of those evils
you have to bear. You know, our
only and primary aim is, like, mak-
ing music and making sure it's good
music.
"We've got a very self-critical *
attitude in the band where, even if
there's rave reviews about some-
thing, we don't believe them. I
mean, we know how good and bad
we are... We know that we haven't
reached a fraction of our potential
yet. So success is something that's a
gas, you know? You can have some
fun and you don't take it seriously
and you don't believe it because it's
a transient thing. Success is some-
thing which is immediate and can be
forgotten, and really, we're only
concerned with making records that
are going to survive time..."
The other part of the attitude
probably comes from the band's
musical influences and from the
musicians that they admire. Though
it would be easy to say Chapter-
house is an amalgamation of three
bands (Cocteau Twins, My Bloody
Valentine and Jesus and Mary
Chain), Patman can more correctly
explain for himself where they fit
in. "You know," he says, "there's
lots of bands you go through stages
of when you're younger, when we
were all... fifteen, the Mary Chain
were a real catalyst for us to think
that we could make music for
ourselves.
"At the moment, I think that
Robin Guthrie's (of the Cocteau
Twins) been doing basically what
we would love to be in the position
(to be doing) in ten years... I think
his outlook on making... records,
you know, just like consistently
make a record that you think is im-
proving, is like challenging your-
self, and you can see your progres-
sion in it... I think that Kevin
Shields is doing some really good
work with My Bloody Valentine. I
mean he's been going for quite some
while as well, and he's really, he's
definitely doing something worth
hearing."
Ultimately, Patman remains the
humble, slight, non-successful gui-
tarist/vocalist/songwriter in this
little band you've probably never
heard of called Chapterhouse. "I
don't really have much to say unless
I'm asked about something spe-
cific," he says. "And I'm not an
opinionated person." At this point,
I had to say, yes, Stephen, you are an
opinionated person. "Well, I am,
but I don't go around telling people
unless they want to know."
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