Camouflage - The Method of Silence

Where have the dreams of youth gone?

(Yasujirō Ozu)

Neue Deutsche Welle, chapter one: towards the end of the 70s, Germany's alternative landscape is a thicket of groups showcasing a pronounced taste for autonomous, eccentric and avant-garde sounds, emerging from the shallows of kraut-rock experimentation and coarsened by punk's cocky attitude. Key factors in all this are the do-it-yourself mentality and the wave of post-modernism that had seeped into mainstream culture. In this scenario, the notion takes hold that anyone can make their way, all the better if armed with outlandish and implausible ideas: art students, unruly teenagers and promising young men united against consumerism scrape together cheap recording gear and the most disparate instruments as a kind of arsenal against boredom and everyday life.

The epigone movement of British new wave sprouts across much of the West, but the German musical undergrowth is a thicket cloaked in treasures so genuine and peculiar that it deserves a label of its own: Liaisons Dangereuses, D.A.F., Palais Schaumburg, Der Plan and Fehlfarben are just some of the more palatable and disco-friendly names on the scene, despite often amateurish homemade productions (they would later be dethroned by chart-toppers à-la Bruce & Bongo, Trio, Nena and Peter Schilling, some of whom, with hindsight, have been downgraded to kitsch phenomena).

Meanwhile in Bietigheim-Bissingen, an out-of-the-way town in pre-reunification Baden-Württemberg, Heiko Maile, Oliver Kreyssig, Marcus Mein and Martin Kähling are four teenagers with a passion for guitars and synthesizers, cutting their teeth in Lizenenced Technology; a few months later, however, Kähling decides to leave, and the three survivors choose to carry on as Camouflage, in homage to the title of a song by Yellow Magic Orchestra, of whom they are great admirers (the song appears on their 1981 album “BGM”). It's 1984: Heiko and Oli are in vocational training, Marcus has yet to finish high school, but with their meagre savings the boys manage to put together a little studio in the basement of Heiko's parents' house (on Metterzimmerer Strasse in Kleinsachsenheim, near Stuttgart), nicknamed the “Boy’s Factory”, where they love to spend their days writing and strumming away.

In no time at all they put together a couple of demos, which in 1986 land them a win in a talent-scout contest organised by radio Hesse. They start playing live in a number of clubs on the circuit, until they're spotted by a scout from WestSide Records, a small Frankfurt-based label that lets the group record a first version of "The Great Commandment", destined to remain their biggest commercial smash.

Voices And Images from the Eighties: the great commandment

At the time, West Side is known chiefly for grooming artists and then pitching them to majors with greater reach, so the early version of the track (made with a typical tape sampler and originally titled "Suddenly Went Away") is quickly cleaned up and shopped around to various companies. Among those willing to finance them, the band chooses to sign with Sweden's Metronome, who on 4 March 1988 release Voices And Images, recorded at Dynaton Studios in Weiterstadt under the direction of Axel Henninger. Cold synths, dark vocals, robotic percussion: the lead single "The Great Commandment/Pompeji" is showcased on TV on the "Spruchreif" programme (on the ARD network) and reaches number fourteen at home, while in the United States it climbs to the top of the Billboard Dance Chart (where it stays for three non-consecutive weeks). The era is dominated by conflicts, tensions and apocalyptic scenarios, non-aggression pacts and embargoes, world government in the hands of an elderly man and a woman. The Cold War is nearly over, the Berlin Wall still standing: the album is a wonderfully sad invitation to lose yourself in eternity while dancing to the icy, computerised rhythms of the anti-racist "Neighbours" (the lyrics refer to America's chronic problems with discrimination and police shootings) or to the eloquent "Helpless Helpless" and "Winner Takes Nothing", fatalistic anthems by moonlight. Meyn delivers every word in a heavy, baritone tone, lending solemn emphasis to "Where Has The Childhood Gone", a music-box nursery rhyme and nostalgic look back at childhood gardens, echoed by children's choirs and sinister little laughs that further deepen a little gem of devastating melancholy.

I remember all the days which have gone by

years before now, when I was a child

we ran through the town and held our hands

we did all the things which we had planned

where has it gone, where has the childhood gone?

For thousands of times we played down in the street

we had fun while we played hide and seek.

We ran through the town like we’ll never do anymore

we did all the things we should ignore.

Where has it gone…. ?

Forbidden games and the loss of innocence: here are "the masters of sadness" (as someone, not wrongly, has called them), but there's more to it. The steady, metronomic opener "That Smiling Face", for instance, blooms with technical skill and neo-psychedelic balancing acts akin to the more sugar-coated Modern English (a sly, roguish timbre à la Robbie Grey of "After The Snow" and "Ricochet Days", to give you an idea); also memorable are "From Ay To Bee" (a notch above the rest) and the second, pounding single "Strangers' Thoughts", which climbs to number 20 (syncopated pace and off-beat rhythm, the video directed by Reiner Thieding). "I Once Had A Dream" is a touch more baroque and flirts with neo-folk, as does the piece "Music For Ballerinas" (the little trumpet leading the dance is, in its own way, essential in giving it a touch of kraut-rock/progressive personality).

Closing the circle are "They Catch Secrets" (menacing, conspiratorial in nature, it would have made a fine fit for a spy film) and "Pompeji", another cinematic-ambient instrumental worthy of an Oscar nod. The only drawback, perhaps, is a debut that arrives a touch later than more illustrious peers, denying them their rightful place in the pantheon, but ten years on darkwave still exerts a pure, uncontaminated appeal: on the whole Voices And Images is an excellent opening statement, managing to combine Kraftwerk's measured geometries, OMD's airy pop and the claustrophobic atmospheres of the gloomiest, most depressing Depeche Mode.

Talent is something Camouflage have in spades, and during a promotional jaunt to New York they land a contract with the giant Atlantic Records, celebrating the haul by treating themselves to a new studio nicknamed "Boy's Factory 2" (set up in the premises of a disused former factory a few kilometres outside their hometown). A few months later they're back at work with Dan Lacksman, this time at Synsound in Brussels: Methods Of Silence (June 1989) is another record to frame, with the producer (already behind Telex's biggest hits) opting for a mix of vintage and modern technology and giving the trio more creative room. On this foundation come a number of tracks of enviable sonic precision. Chief among them "Love Is A Shield", a dancefloor-filling hit with an intimidating beat that reaches number 9 in Germany (where it stays for six months) and earns the band a degree of visibility across the rest of Europe: it's probably their best-known song, made immortal by a hypnotic keyboard riff and an obsessive, dark-gothic-style chorus.

Love is a shield to hide behind, love is a field to grow inside

and when I sometimes close my eyes my mind starts spinning round…

Love baby in a mother’s arms, love is your breath which makes me warm

and when I sometimes close my eyes my mind starts spinning round…

The track flirts with the Xymox of the "Imagination" era: "When we wrote it, we were in New York" Meyn recalls, "we were watching an old black-and-white film in which Ernest Borgnine warns a young man, 'You know, love is a shield.' I thought it was a really spot-on line and I used it as the main theme of the song. Our aim is to write music fit for any situation in life, hoping the listener can relate to it at every moment of their own."

The rest of the tracklist conjures poetic images in the manner of the more theatrical, decadent And Also The Trees — "Anyone", "The Rues" and the Arabic-tinged "Feeling Down" — the arrangements (violin, saxophone and industrial Gallicisms) are grandiose and often funereal, the one common thread being existential malaise. Along the same lines are "Sooner Than We Think" and "Your Skinhead Is The Dream" (a cryptic, hermetic digital "Tomorrow started"), while "On Islands", "A Picture Of Life" and "One Fine Day" give the ear something extra and veer towards a joyful, multi-layered spleen (as opposed to the stony, chiselled IDM to which Camouflage would often, hastily, be compared in the 90s).

Special mention goes to the circus organ and filtered car horns of "Rue De Morsleede", a waltz in black of just 37 seconds that closes the album amid dark omens: indeed, at the end of the European tour, Kreyssig leaves for personal reasons, and Meyn and Mail roll up their sleeves and choose to carry on as a duo, relocating for a time to England's Black Barn Studios, where, together with producer Colin Thurston (whose credits include David Bowie, Talk Talk and Duran Duran), they record their third album Meanwhile (1991), marking an unexpected change of direction from their earlier work.

Time Is Over: the Nineties

The new decade widens their horizons, but inspiration suddenly seems to wane: the band now opts to bring in real percussion and acoustic instruments (on drums, Gavin Harrison, already a guest musician for King Crimson and Porcupine Tree) and the sound turns decisively towards rock, in keeping with an unwritten law that in those very days saw many pillars of new wave reinvent themselves as stadium giants with mixed results (Depeche Mode with "Songs Of Faith And Devotion" and Simple Minds with "Good News From Next World", just to name a couple). Even the vocal approach sounds different — the February 1991 single "Heaven (I Want You)" is nonetheless a modest success at home — and seems to ape the rising stars of Britpop, but the obvious generational gap condemns the Germans to obscurity.

Worth saving is "Mellotron", fun and breezy, while "Mother" and "Dad" are more sombre, epistolary invectives addressed to parents dealing with incest and child abuse (who knows if there's an autobiographical angle, "no one will believe/'cause he's your dad"). "Waiting" and "Seize Your Day" derail onto saccharine, one-note tracks, as does "Where The Happy Live", which fizzles out tediously despite an energetic little chorus.

The rest is a bitter-sweet, fluffy and inconclusive consolation prize ("Spellbound", "These Eyes" and "Who The Hell Is David Butler?").

August brings a German tour and the release of the double a-side "This Day/Handsome" (the respective clips were shot in Rome, between St. Peter's Basilica and the Eur district, and the images bear an uncanny resemblance to New Order's "Regret" - same set), but faced with disappointing box-office returns, Atlantic decides to end the relationship. "Of course we'd have preferred things to go differently, but at that moment we wanted to make that kind of record - maybe we got bad advice," Heiko notes without too many regrets, taking the opportunity for a break to reflect, and together with Marcus he relocates to Hamburg. Here the two found their own publishing house and put on record the side project Areu Areu (the eponymous five-track EP contains the unreleased "Mr.X"/"Modern Technology" plus four covers in electro style: Lennon/McCartney's "Day Tripper", Fad Gadget's "Ricky's Hand", the Cure's "Cold" and Heaven 17/Depeche Mode's "I'm Your Money/Tora Tora Tora").

The competition, however, is ruthless, and here too the label prefers to bet on other horses capable of chasing trends more quickly, which is why in 1993 Metronome Musik ventures the follow-up Bodega Bohemia only in German-speaking markets.

The goal is to revive the band's fortunes through a decisive return to full-on electronic sounds and requisite synths, without losing sight of melody and narrative: the singles "Suspicious Love", "Jelousy" and "Close (We Stroke To The Flames)" are in this sense the best snapshots (the latter points a finger at the worrying neo-Nazi wave that right in those days seemed to be shaking up Europe - "They're marching with torches... history repeats itself, and if we don't care, it will end the same way. We stroke the flames, we never put out those years, we should have learned", the lyrics go).

"Pedestrian Adventures" is a decent Numan-esque dance track (the keyboard one-two recalls Tubeway Army's "Me! I Disconnect From You!"), while "Bondage People" and "In Your Ivory Tower" are more anonymous and restrained - pleasant enough, but not entirely satisfying, at least not for Metronome, who give the band their marching orders and focus hard on more profitable emerging pop acts (like Ace Of Base).

The following years prove far from easy for Camouflage, but they bring interesting ideas: through a mutual friend, Heiko and Marcus get in touch with the promoter of a theatrical production in which they invest their remaining energy, only for it to be shelved after more than six months of hard work due to unresolved legal disputes between rights holders and organizers. The demos and visual concept aren't lost, however, and the material forms the backbone of Spice Crackers, greenlit in 1995 by Bmg on the suggestion of Andreas "Bär" Läsker, manager of rappers Die Fantastischen Vier, who was intrigued by the duo's compositional skill - for the occasion they chose a comic-book, sci-fi-leaning outfit.

At a showcase event held in Stuttgart, the two singles "Bad News" and "X-Ray" are presented, but they don't get the attention hoped for, and neither does the album as a whole (it's discontinued within days) - a real shame, given that the tracklist delivers some top-tier techno flashes, starting with the ecstatic "Je Suis Dieu" or "Funky Service", an elusive ambient piece that winks at chill-out. Reference points and state of mind shift (the title track "Spice Crackers" anticipates the Bowie-Outsider of "Deranged", while "In Search Of Ray Milland" recalls the otherworldly sounds of early Orb), but the result is thoroughly enjoyable.

Well worth listening to in one sitting are "Kraft" and "Electronic Music" (an evocative, self-referential pair of titles), "Back To Heaven" and the instrumental "Ronda's Trigger" (Ronda Ray being Maile's alias), but given yet another inexplicable sales flop, the two decide to go their separate ways for a while (they'd reunite a year later on the various-artists compilation "Treasury" with the track "Winter") and pursue parallel activities: Marcus reinvents himself as product manager for "Four Music" (the same label as the aforementioned Die Fantastischen Vier) and co-writes "You Were There" with Pascal FEOS and Maik Maurice, while Heiko works as a freelance sideman for all sorts of musicians (from house to rock to hip-hop).

In 1997 comes the box set Best Of Camouflage: We Stroke The Flames, put together by Polydor and Sony Music (it includes a remix of "Love Is A Shield" by William Orbit) and rounded out by a limited-edition maxi-single reprising "Suspicious Love", "Handsome" and again "Love Is A Shield" (both releases, however, are disowned by Heiko and Marcus and don't count as official catalog). Cover design is curiously entrusted to former band member Oliver Kreyssing, who remained on excellent terms with the two and was eager to return full-time.

Buoyed by the news, the pair envision a grand comeback, finally planning a new LP as a trio, the sixth studio album Sensor (released on 26 May 2003 by Islands Records), whose genesis proves anything but smooth.

Three again: the 2000s

Sessions take place in three separate locations: sound engineer Rob Kirwan works in London with Toy, Gerret Freirichs in Hamburg, and Maile in Saal 3 of the Medienhaus in Stuttgart, with the respective audio files then shared online via the band's website to be finalized. Two finely crafted singles emerge, "Me And You" and "I Can't Feel You", plus a third, "Thief", which had actually already been finished and performed live in Sweden in June 2000 at a concert in Freiberg, and in 2001 at the Wave Gothic Meeting in Leipzig (with Virgin's blessing, though the label quickly backed off, reluctant to fund a whole album of new material).

Most of the tracks find a logical, well-defined cohesion without too many highs or lows: if on one hand "I'll Follow Behind" and "Together" echo the energetic pop-rock of post-clean-up Dave Gahan in "Ultra"/"Paper Monsters" mode, on the other hand they get stuck in an uninspired hybrid - a fate shared by "Perfect" and "Blink" (featuring Neele Ternes), initially planned as further singles but then shelved given the chart struggles of the earlier ones.

In any case, Sensor is promoted with an exhausting tour of Germany, Russia and Turkey that yields at least a deal with independent label SPV: the seventh album Relocated (August 2006) is driven by "Motif Sky", "Something Wrong" and "The Pleasure Remains" (the latter only for the Polish market). This time the mood is steeped in dusky, introspective tones, finding its best expressions in the touching "The Perfect Key" and "Dreamers".

Maturity undoubtedly benefits the band, who paint magnetic fields and abstract landscapes of notable sonic ingenuity (Jarre the master isn't all that far off). "We Are Lovers", "Something Wrong", "Passing By" and the intro "Memory" showcase their fine pedigree and sharpen the emotional impact - watch out too for the ghost track "Last Contact", tacked onto the end of the closing track "How Do You Feel?" (after a good two minutes of absolute silence).

The two-part anthology Archive#1 (Rare Tracks) from 2007 gathers various rarities and remix versions, arriving at the end of an intense tour of South Africa and Mexico, which serves as a prelude to the explosive Live In Dresden from 2009, another rich live testament to their undisputed performing abilities (a CD and double DVD of excellent audio quality, crowning twenty years of distinguished career), which momentarily brings the band's story to a close.

The Box 1983-2013 and The Singles (2014) pile on the nostalgia further with the original 7” of “The Great Commandment” and a “2.0” re-edit of the same track (on drums the Austrian session player Christian Eigner, who has also performed on stage with Depeche Mode).

In 2015, however, came an unexpected twist: on 6 March Greyscale is released in Germany (and on the 27th in the rest of the world) on the Bureau B label (reaching number fourteen on the charts): it's the band's eighth album of new material, breaking a creative silence that had lasted around nine years. The sessions took place between 2011 and 2014, and the album's release, initially set for September 2014 to coincide with celebrations for the band's thirtieth anniversary, was pushed back to February of the following year due to production delays. A nostalgia trip or a cloying revival exercise? Not at all: the project rests on solid foundations, and its thirteen tracks sketch out a script of rare clarity and brilliance, where hope and melancholy merge into a fresh, varied contemporary tapestry. In charge of production is Heiko Maile, fresh from several forays into film scoring (2008's “Die Welle” and 2010's “Wir Sind Die Nacht”, both directed by Dennis Gansel), joined by the trusty Volker Hinkel (guitar, co-production) and Jochen Schmalbach (mixing), the band's near-permanent “fourth” and “fifth” members, always front and centre in the expanded line-ups for concerts and other promotional activities.

One hand on the needle and the other on the heart: the record spins and it's a pleasure, dance, tears and contemplation cutting through the leaden greyness of our times. The main course is the single “Shine” (a successful contrast between electronic elements and a string ensemble kindly provided by the Babelsberg Film Orchestra) and “Leave Your Room Behind”, with its soft, delicate arrangements. “Laughing” starts slowly and turns into a graceful choral section before softening again, whereas “Misery” is an unstoppable, blazing dance-pop ride. “Still” betrays a jazzy touch, as does the solo-piano intro “If…”.

Within this context, the instrumental twins “Light Grey”/“Dark Grey” work well, along with the delicate midtempo “End Of The Words”; also worth hearing are the refined “In The Cloud” and the fine title track “Greyscale”. The album closes with the infectious hyperballad “Count On Me”, in itself rather unremarkable, but what a thrill to hear the vocal performance of friend Peter Heppner (frontman of Wolfsheim)…: it's without doubt the best track of the bunch, nailing a killer chorus of moving sensitivity.

To date, “Count On Me” is the last single released by the band (on 9 October 2015); its prophetic lyrics sound more like a see-you-later than a goodbye, with the promise - indeed the certainty - that we can still count on Camouflage in the future.

I can’t hide, I can’t run

from the things whatever I have done

but the truth will set me free

I can always count on you, as you can always count on me…

Ride the wave of great music

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