Well it is in my book, anyway. Matt Woebot's sublime collection of obscure German experimental new wave pop alternatives from the early '80s really is an outstanding document of the 'Neue Deutche Welle' scene (NDW for short), the culmination of months of research and probably spending a small fortune on e-bay tracking down all those artifacts. The fact that Matt must've trawled through hours of crap/average stuff to hone in on the real gems is equally to be applauded. Like No Wave, Italodisco and (dare I say it) New Beat, here's another 'Secret History' that absolutely needed to be unearthed and reappraised.
The full tracklist with some background on each can be found here. There's nothing that I don't like on this disc, although particular praise must go to Mathias Shuster for the incredibely primitive guttertronics of "Im Namen Des Volkes", the amazingly prescient dubtronica of Monoton's "Root Of 1=1" (I must get hold of the cd reissue!) and the weird yet extremely catchy electro-pop of "Wir Sind Gluchlicj" by Stahlnetz. The only act I'd even heard of was Die Krupps. I got into some of their later stuff when they were more like an industrial-rock group, but I never backtracked to 1981 when they released the mind-blowing 15 minute dub-funk whiteout that is "Stahlwerksynfonie". Yet most of these tracks sound like the soundtrack to a spectacular alternative pop universe where Neu!, Joe Meek, Suicide and early Sheffield pioneers like the Cabs and proto-Human League altered the DNA of mainstream popular music. The sound of my weirdest dreams....
Matt's only been handing out cd-r copies to a select few, so why am I bothering to blog about something that's unattainable to 99% of readers? Firstly, it's a public 'thank you' to Matt for sending me a copy, and second a plea to any discerning reissue labels out there to licence these tracks and put the compilation out officially, with a nice booklet 'n shit. And pay Matt a tidy little fee for compiling and writing the sleeve notes. Seriously, it needs to be done.
Fantastic work, Matt. Your chest....
