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 5TH AVE0 AT LIBERTY 761.9700 $3 ODAILY SHOWS BEFORE 6 PM ALL DAY TUESDAY -. I "i est Serv hi i iTwn Bet Srcn Town! es~t ?Se~~!~rie UI Town! Best r icen Tow REIHAN7 un! o cc coo C 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 SPACEF? REALBUTTERED POPCORN 1 POPPED IN PEANUT OIL WE ARE A TICKET CENTER 1140 South U (Above Good-Time C Ann Arbor, MI l4810 Ph: 663-5800 Hours: Mon-Thurs. 9 a FrI.-Sat. 9 a Sun. 11 S BONNIE RAITT E Luck Of The Draw CatM .a You Low MaelotThe 0. . . o We've got plenty niversity filled with great Charleys) 14 new music on .m.-10 p.m-. .m.-11 p.m- sae I The Doctor (PG.13) Barton Fink (R) IL BUY A 22 OZ. DRINK AND GET ONE Frei 4.. e e0Pop in PRESENT THIS COUPON WITH PURCHASED S TICKET THRU 9-26-91 a.m.- 8 p.m FREE EMF Calendar for September 1991. Look for a new one each month with your favorite acts on it! 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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