Rin - "Neverland"
(Division Recordings, from 6th December)
As Tsar Alexander III. In 1885, when he made a precious gold and enamel gift for his wife, he did not dream of believing that it would be traded as an Insta-cool item 134 years later. Today, the Tsar's Fabergé egg is ripe for rap, omnipresent on YouTube, Spotify and in the German charts. Responsible for this is Renato Simunovic from Bietigheim-Bissingen, better known as Deutschrap-Prince Rin, with his top ten single "Fabergé".
Rin stands for the transformation of hip-hop into an online shopping paradise. His music does not sport aggression, but softness and style. The most glamorous is always when Rin dresses his I-buy-the-world-pose in mid-pam-cuddly-schlager and perfumed even the most banal everyday gossip. A bit of heartache and a cracked ego, the first-person narrator wrote on his debut album "Eros" with bass, tipping and an exact consumption schedule: You could set the clock after, when he ordered the next hoodie.
No coincidence, of course. Rin's sound is as processed as his favorite streetwear label - zero bells and whistles. A beat, a bassline, a harmonious basic color for every song, surrounded by discreet, but noble borders. This is how louder Basics come into being, with one thing in particular: one's own branding.
His second album "Neverland" is a longing machine with quite conservative goals: always young and looking good. Reacting uncompromisingly to this "Peter Pan" myth, most recently through the controversial "Neverland" documentary about Michael Jackson, bears witness to Rins self-confidence. He introduces us to the alternative: "Mona Lisa or Pop Art", whereby of course he means himself with second.
Andreas Borcholte's playlist KW 49
MIRROR ONLINE
Playlist on Spotify
1 The Who: Ball And Chain
2 Poliça: Driving
3 The Weeknd: Heartless
4 Rin: Bietigheimication
5 Tricky feat. Marta: Makes Me Wonder
6 Kat Frankie: How To Be Your Own Person
7 Georgia: Started Out
8 Burial: Claustro
9 Joy Overmono: Bromley
10 No Bra: Bangin
Not wrong. Holding the surface tension is celebrated here as art. Just like the product placement. A word field analysis shows striking concentrations at Lagerfeld, Nike, Rolex and Nintendo. Everything is full of references from the history of pop. Instead of the "Californication" of the Red Hot Chili Peppers we experience a "Bietigheimication"; a piece called "Nirvana" quotes the controversial -Kurt Cobain song "Rape Me"; another is named after the Tamil-British musician MIA. Rio Reiser's "Junimond" is invoked, the hit "You do not carry a love in you" by the band Echt for a refrain borrowed.
Thus, Rin establishes a reference network of know-how, good taste and luxury lifestyle, as known from the pop literature of the nineties. A network that fooled security, but resonate in the primeval fears when Rin strikes previously unheard tones. "Come with me from your room", he singsangt in the title track "Never Land", but with the addition: "If you can." Getting out in the world and in your pocket is not always that easy in the burnout age. The abundance also leaves a lot of emptiness. Fear of loss and failure. Diffuse desires that have no ultimate goal.
"What does my Roli show me when I do not have time?" Rin asks once. All the buzz of consumer culture is shrinking to an existential question. A great line. By no means everything on this album is so good, but in such moments it becomes clear: "Neverland" is for 2020 what was the 1995Christian Krachts novel "Faserland". The portrait of a world on the verge of sinking. (7.3) Arno Raffeiner
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Neverland
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The Who: Who
(Polydor / Universal, from 6th December)
Who, if not the eternally uncomfortable Who are needed in these times? Thirteen years after their last album, songwriter and guitarist Pete Townshend, 74, and vocalist Roger Daltrey, 75, return with a brilliant album. It will probably be her last. But it does not sound like a farewell.
On the contrary. Although he feels too old for the fight, the bones groan and hurt, Townshend lets his frontman sing in the quasi-final piece "Rockin In Rage", but not to raise the voice, for fear of Kritikerhäme or Ageism is just not an option: "I know I must write / I know I must say". The music is as angry as 50 years ago, echoes of "Substitute" spirits through this new, surprisingly muscular Who anthem, in other songs of the album are cleverly hinted at classics like "Magic Bus" or "Baba O'Riley", "Detour" refers to the first band name that musicians and art students adopted in Shepherd's Bush at the beginning of the sixties - a bit of fan service.
Nevertheless, "Who" has not become a nostalgia test. At the beginning, bad mood is spread, as if these angry old men (supported by Simon Townshend and drummer Zak Starkey) were just biting their plastic spoons in their mouths and spitting out the bitter bits in the room with an angry spit: "This sound that we share already has been played, "says" All This Music Must Fade "to peppy Townshend riffs. Implicitly the anticipated criticism question: Does it still need you? Has the world been waiting for a new Who album? Nope. But no matter: "I do not care / I know you're gonna hate this song / And that's it," sings Daltrey, and Townshend cocks at the end of a "who gives a fuck" purely. Glorious.
"Who" is the best album they have managed since "Quadrophenia," the mod-defining rock opera of 1973, Daltrey said about the songs Townshend had written to him over the past two years for the guttural voice. On the one hand, that would not be a big feat considering the mixed quality of the late 70's and early 80's albums. On the other hand, the comparison is daring. Nevertheless, the energy and rousing dissatisfaction with which The Who struggles on several fronts in 2019 is nevertheless impressive: "Ball And Chain" etches on US imperialism and the lawlessness of the prisoners in Guantanamo, "Street Song" leans against with tips Politicians and the media allude to the Who signature "Will not Get Fooled Again" - and pay tribute to the marginalized victims of the fire disaster in London's Grenfell Tower, just around the corner from their old neighborhood.
The boorish, always dangerous-looking defiance with which The Who once plunged into the triumvirate of the British Invasion bands between the Stones and the Beatles has become a grumbling Renitence, also gripped by Daltrey's low-pitched voice: Against the ravishment of the powerful, know-it-alls or idiots are still possible, but the biggest enemy seems to be aging. He'll always be the one to tell us the truth, according to Break the News, a happy, almost Ed-Sheeran-style pop number, but a few lines away, the weathered rebel sits snugly in the bathrobe on the sofa and watch old movies.
Not everything on this 12th Who album has such anarchic charm or the antigeriatric power of the louder tracks. For example, the synth-soul pulp of "I'll Be Back" is as irritating as the hippie-trip "Beads On A String". And also "Hero Ground Zero" is too chunky and cheesy, to be cool. But given the perplexity, gustiness and saturation of contemporary rock bands (see Coldplay last week), this kind of uprising of old white men is more than welcome. (8.3) Andreas Borcholte
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Who
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Burial - "Tunes 2011 to 2019"
(Hyperdub / Cargo, from 6th December)
One does not really know where to begin to describe this music. Because it touches you so directly and at the same time irritatingly abstract. It's best to start with "Young Death", a track that focuses on Burial's sound aesthetics. A beat that invokes a specific segment of the history of electronic music, Minimal Techno in this case. This is followed by sad synthesizers and a sampled ghost voice that promises to be one of those that are usually unbearable ("Hey child / I always want to be there for you"). Then layer after layer piles up: pulsation, warm crackling and noise. The apathetic Düsterbass again suggests that the promise was probably broken.
Since his debut in 2006, William Emmanuel Bevan has developed under the name Burial a singular and radically headstrong nerd music that does not rest on its original formula of success, but has been transformed over and over again in the past decade. The Tunes 2011-2019 collection now contains the EPs that Bevan published in the decade. It begins with two complex ambient pieces ("State Forest", "Beachfires") that sound as if they were written shortly after the end of the world.
Listened to on the radio
Wednesdays at 23 o'clock there is the Hamburger Web-Radio ByteFM an intercepted mixtape with many songs from the discussed records and highlights from the personal playlist of Andreas Borcholte.
In general, the theme of this music is the loss. Something has disappeared and now floats either as a sample, as a noise or as a voice from the past through these tracks. Subgenres of British dance music are called, rave-euphoria, 2-step, garage, dubstep and so on. But they appear in Burial's music as noisy memories of something beautiful, glittering that is passing by as if through a veil.
This also applies to comparably danceable tracks such as "Claustro" or "Kindred": You can not imagine any other music that tells so intensely about those long-buried hopes that once combined with pop and subculture - but without becoming melancholy about it. These hopes had to be disappointed because everything that was really important in pop - the euphoria, the beauty, the feeling of liberation, but also the security - could not be persuaded permanently into the world beyond Pop: into the socialized reality School, education, wage labor and small family. As a result, this is literally the weirdest electronic music of the last twenty years. (9.0) Benjamin Moldenhauer
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Tunes 2011-2019
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Error Kuti - "Shame Is The Place For Me"
(Alien Transistor, from 6th December)
Does anyone still remember the magic word "Schland"? This epitome of euphony that conjures a fantasy from a summer fairy tale in 2006? Black-red-gold patriotism was declared a funky must-have at the time, and some of the top sellers in the Schland range (vuvuzela, rear-view mirroring) were preserved in the fan folklore and are taken by Volkswagen at least every two years.
But of course, Schland is a projection. And for many who live in the Federal Republic and are not counted to the majority society, also an alienation. Somehow clear about this fact and perhaps even making good and clever art out of it, is the mission of Fehler Kuti.
Behind the pseudonym is the Munich-based Julian Warner, who calls himself a "singing cultural anthropologist". He uses music, in addition to science, theater or visual art, only as a possible field for his interventions. He has now recorded the first error Kuti album together with Tobias Siegert and Markus Acher from The Notwist. The Kalauer from the project name Warner begins with the seriousness of the situation and a reference to the fundamental error in the system: The emblazoned as a walking racist cartoon, already on the cover. But Warner's music does not simply reproduce Fela Kuti clichés or tap into the afrobeat emulation trap.
"Space Is The Place," Sun Ra once said, thinking of the future. Mistake Kuti approaches the matter a bit closer to the earth and deals with the current reality of the post-welcome culture. The most striking feature of "Shish Is The Place For Me" is his unruffled nature. The music never gets striking, never screams "protest!" or "Fusion!". Lines like "Say yes to another excess" and even the distress call "Mayday Mayday" are canceled with excessive understatement: neat, almost enjoyable, without panic.
Mistake Kuti and his fellow musicians rattle the drums a bit, synth and Hammond organ sound lewd, the overall impression is handmade and earthy. Everything moves in the middle range: speed, volume, density, emotional balance. This looks a bit pale at first. One notices only gradually, that the Ausgefuchstheit lies precisely in the simplicity with which here a highly complex field is made to oscillate. Yes, that could be it: the sound of decolonization.
At least an idea of it. Brass is not necessarily a sham. Rather, it is noticeable that the blower, which knows one or the other of the Weißwurst breakfast, also calls completely different contexts in error Kuti. A song with a very pretty bell is titled "Il". The acronym stands for "Interracial Love", the sober in two-tone melodies repeated words verkuppeln hand claps with trombone and Tablas with a cherub choir from the retort. Pretty gentle, but at some point it will spark.
Of course, Julian Warner, the whispering anthropologist, explains in the package leaflet where it all leads. His music is intended to withstand the fact that different people are wagging their heads for very different reasons. But the groove is the same. (7.2) Arno Raffeiner
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Schland Is The Place For Me
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Rating: From "0" (absolute disaster) to "10" (absolute classic)
