Im Namen des Volkes! - Yet More German Post-Punk and New Wave

(Click on the picture to download.)

01. Matthias Schuster - Verlangen (1981)
More sinister, alienated synth-creepiness from the über-prolific Matthias Schuster. This one comes from his solo album Atemlos that was given the reissue treatment by NLW.

02. Mona Mur & Die Mieter - My Lie (1982)
Dark, expressionist proto-goth, somewhere between Malaria!, X-Mal Deutschland and early Siouxsie. Die Mieter were Neubauten members Alex Hacke, Marc Chung and F.M. Einheit plus one Gode B. Although the band broke up after their only EP, Einheit and Hacke continued performing and recording sporadically with singer Mona Mur until the mid eighties.

03. Kosmonautentraum - Kosmonautentraum Nr. 7 (1981)
Anchored by a big, stumblingly chugging bassline, this is one of the more accessible tracks by Andy XY's dada project and all the better for it. The other two tracks on the Liebesmüh'n 12" are practically unlistenable in their deliberate crudeness. This one's good though.

04. Thorax-Wach - Huckepack und zu Hunderten in den Tod (1980)
From the provincial northern town of Göttingen this duo unleashed their brand of electronic terror, abusing a microphone, two Korg synthesizers and a 2 track recorder. Like Geile Tiere or Sprung aus den Wolken, their best tracks tread a bizarre and disconcerting middleground between the merely wacky and the scarily demented.

05. Alexander von Borsig - Japanisch (1982)
Alexander Hacke with a track from his solo EP Hiroshima, released under the alias Alexander von Borsig. Hacke was somewhat of a post-punk Wunderkind, getting into music at age thirteen, joining Einstürzende Neubauten in 1980 when he was just fifteen years old and being quite prolific during the early eighties with a slew of bands and one-off projects. Hiroshima's title track can be found on the excellent Berlin-underground compilation Als die Partisanen kamen, posted on the WMFU blog.

06. Christiane F. - Süchtig (Health Dub) (1982)
Yet more Neubauten related stuff: here's the dub version of Christiane F.'s Wunderbar, with both Hacke and Einheit credited as producers, musicians and co-composers. If you liked the original (included here), this remix will quite probably be up your alley too.

07. Die Dominas - Die Wespendomina (1981)
This is probably the most peculiar intersection between Krautrock and Krautwave (and Kraut-techno, for that matter), involving Kraftwerk members Karl Bartos and Ralf Hütter, Ashra/Ashra Temple's Manuel Göttsching (who had produced the debut single of post-punk experimentalists Geile Tiere the year before) and somtime Ashra Temple collaborator Rosi Müller. (Read the whole story over here.)

The complete 10inch is available at Mutant Sounds, but the track featured here also happens to be the basis for the techno classic Domina by Maurizio aka Moritz von Oswald - the same guy who joined Palais Schaumburg as a drummer on their third album and played on records by Holger Hiller, Propaganda and Billy MacKenzie.

08. Im Namen des Volkes - Raumkrank (1980)
Im Namen des Volkes was a short-lived solo project by Matthias Schuster, resulting in two 7" singles, Weißes Rauschen and Ich war da, leergebrannt (from which this track is taken), and the LP Volksmusik. The latter is slated for rerelease on NLW.

09. Deutsche Wertarbeit - Deutscher Wald (1981)
Equal parts post-Neu!/Harmonia electro-Kraut and synth-new wave, this duo's only LP was fittingly released on Sky Records (Roedelius, Conrad Schnitzler, the Cluster/Eno collaborations, Michael Rother).

10. Carmen - Schlaraffenland (1982)
Now here's a hit that never was. From what I've read it seems that Puppe aus Glas, the only album by Carmen, was delibaretely aimed at commercial success. I've yet to hear the whole record, but if Schlaraffenland is anything to go by, it's beyound me why it didn't happen. Super-catchy little girl-pop with a hefty dose of charming, Andreas Dorau-style faux-naïveté (Carmen used to be one of his background singers) wedded to TomTom Club-goes-Teutonic funkiness - what's not to like?

11. Wirtschaftswunder - Der Komissar (1980)
A fun cover version of the title theme of Der Komissar, a highly popular - and almost hilariously square - German crime series from the seventies. The dialogue snippets used are from the episode Tod eines Hippie-Mädchens. Let's just say that the script writers don't necessarily display a very sympathetic attitude towards youth culture...

12. Die Hornissen - Pale Blue Eyes (1982)
Zeittunnel, the b-side of this single, is actually far better known and features on quite a few compilations, not least of all the DJ Hell compiled New Deutsch. But this lo-fi cover of the the VU classic does have its charms. Mixed by ex-Can bassist Holger Czukay, by the way, it's another Krautrock/Neue Welle intersection.

13. Thorax-Wach - Dick sind sie und keuchen (1980)
Also taken from the EP Huckepack und zu Hunderten in den Tod. Don't listen to it alone in the dark.

14. Mona Mur & Die Mieter - Jeszcze Polska 1982)
Another one that gives me the creeps. It starts with quotes from the Polish national anthem, followed by dark and violent apocalyptic imagery in German. The lyrics are a bit hard to make out, even for a native speaker, and probably deliberately so. But combined with the martial drums and dissonant guitar they conjure up some nasty mental images of concentration camps, executed partisans and SS-men in shiny boots.