Retro Kosmische seems to hold a validity like few other genre rehashes. Perhaps it's that the boundaries of the genre were initially not defined, or maybe the lack of contemporary attention that caused it to reach receptive ears years too late, but in any case, there's still a rather fertile response to further explorations. Datashock have managed a particularly arresting take on the whole tension/release thing, as well as their ability to integrate that seemlessly into a music simultaneously reverential (towards its Krautrock ancestry) and innovative.
Krautrock as a term exists because not all of the ethereal, experimental rock sounds created in Germany evoke spaciness (covered by the Deutsch-preferred handle "Kosmische" or Cosmic Rock, which has more to do with the Hawkwind & Amon Düül variety of things). There's something in Can's rhythmic restlessness that suggests more of a microcosm than a macrocosm--a Fantastic Voyage through the central nervous system, with Damo Suzuki's unintelligible streams of consciousness as the sound of our own brain murmurs. There is little of the straight-ahead ascent that the spacier music of NEU! and Guru Guru evokes, and none of the ethereality of Popol Vuh or Tangerine Dream. This makes it harder to classify every experimental/rock release from this period under that banner, hence the catch-all "Krautrock".
A series of monoliths--riffs climbing towards the horizon, wordless vocals. Piles of warm synths, fizzing guitars, and gently undulating drums. Makes for an enjoyable listen, despite adding little to some already well-trodden territory. Third track "Chiahonania Leder Boots" has some excellent ululating slide guitar, sounding like a Träd, Gräs Och Stenar outtake. There's a good amount of variety here, from the strains of Ash Ra Tempel echoed throughout opener "Lasagne Phalanx", or the pastoral music box that segues into an ecstacy of Can-like rhythmic shouting and middle eastern undercurrent on the title track. Things lose a little focus at the end, but in a fitting way: the various timbres and moods of the album are revisited and given their say once again, finally drifting off, like the pleasant, dreamless sleep that follows a particularly vivid hallucinogen binge.
Were this not such a pleasant listen on its own, suggesting little in the way of standard '70s "Space Rock", it would be tempting to recommend as a good introduction to the genre. It's more a mashup of various exotic European forms of avant-motorik, these guys are obviously well-versed in the NWW List. However, despite the sitar-ish slide guitar, and rockin' beats, this album manages a more becalmed take on things--without leaving the listener stranded in directionless atmosphere. Each piece is an engaging whole, with interplay that suggests improvisation, but a compositional clarity giving direction. There's a fullness of sound here that I have heard on few recent releases, a marriage of the grimy richness of analog and glitchy clarity of digital, yet in the service of something greater than just a good mix--in fact, very few moments reveal themselves as purely digital, enhancing it with a slightly-dated quality. There are times when I feel the speakers shaking the room, and then I realize the album was over twenty minutes ago, and I've become ultra-attuned to my environment through it's hyper-detailed ambience.
Perhaps the main reason Krautrock is so resistant to exploitation is its nebulous nature. There's no real defining characteristic to the genre other than its time and place of origin, although it has come to symbolize a catch-all term for that straddles the lines of kitschily mind-melting (psychedelic) and futuristically technology-based (post-rock). Like post-rock and post-punk, it's more defined by the attitude that inspired the work than the characteristics of the work itself. As a result, it's influence has had a similarly chameleonic effect: combined with reggae and punk, it provided the main thrust for post-punk, then was stripped of as many cultural signposts as possible and combined with hip-hop and ambient music to create post-rock. Ultimately, it's provided a template for how we interact with "genres" today: Cold Wave? Dance Punk? New Weird America? What do these names signify, beyond the aesthetic expected of the participants? It seems that right now, even the most daring of new genres design themselves to only appeal to listeners predetermined towards liking it. The new aestheticism is like the late '70s development of Album-Oriented Rock, structured to ensure maximum exposure at minimum cost through the pursuit of "accessibility" (i.e. appealing to the ever-present lowest-common-denominator).
Of course, this has its pros and cons. Most people need exposure to culture they wouldn't normally encounter (let's call it "exotic"), for entertainment, if not growth. As an overwhelmingly voyeuristic society, we enjoy observation without interaction, which encourages an increasingly cynical worldview (cynical in this case meaning the opposite of empiric: judging without experiencing). While this ultimately makes interaction safer, it also prevents social change. We are constantly told that technological change drives social evolution (i.e. "Social Networking", which is really nothing of the kind), but personally, I see the opposite. People have become atomized, separated from each other in their comfort zones. Everything about this style of life speaks of a desperation to avoid meaning. I personally have no problem with that, just with the process through which this is reached: gradual replacement of signifiers. Yes, it's become obvious that every commercial enterprise is a crass cash-in, but at this point anything touted as NOT a crass cash-in is immediately assumed to be so, even when the buying public knows the difference well. It's in everyone's best interest to buy into whatever fad is at hand, allowing a mass distraction from whatever unpleasantness goes on. Every "great" society has had this, from the Roman Colisseum to the Salem Witch Trials. No news there, right?
So once we're done with distractions, what's left to do? Improve things? Uh, not really. Unless we're talking about the first-person, in which case improvement is relative. I personally see it in music like this: Datashock are in no way a commercially viable enterprise (despite their affiliations with Julian Cope and his stable of all things psych-rock), nor are they likely to become critical darlings (despite this article's appearance to the contrary), nor are they cult innovators who will be appreciated long after their time. They are silt-sifters: mad old claim-jumpers panning the rivers for gold when most are sunbathing or plotting their climb to the top. Datashock are living in the present, and I would not be surprised if they only existed within the confines of their recordings & live events, then taking a bow and disappearing into the very ether they mine.
Even the song titles hint at prog-gone-by: Gong, Amon Düül, Heldon, Parson Sound. While there's an undeniable retro-fetishism about this collective, it leaves one with a feeling that the past they reference is still more futuristic than most of the modern music being produced. Their music carries a wonderful chunkiness to it, Like Oneida digging a hole to the center of the Earth. While previous efforts by this collective have felt a little uninspired or clunky at times, this album manages to walk a fine balance between yesterday and tomorrow, ending up sounding like a better-than-average today.
