STEREO TOTAL - Musique Automatique

Berlin is the heart of a new music scene made up of clubs, DJs and underground bands. This "litter" — which includes names like Mina, Quarks, Minitchev, Contriva — also includes Stereo Total, an eclectic group that emerged from the fervent melting pot of Bungalow Records. A label that produced, on German soil, about the best you could ask for in the lounge-cocktail-retro-electronic-pop song department. Compared to their fellow travellers, Stereo Total have one extra weapon: a lineup that couldn't be more international: alongside the original duo, made up of Berlin electronic wizard Brezel Goering and French singer Francoise Cactus, there are now Scotsman Lesley Campell on guitar and Palestinian Iznogood on bass. A "transversal" approach that also shows up in the lyrics of "Musique Automatique", all written by Cactus, and sung in German, French, Italian, English and Japanese.

It's a whirl of postmodern sounds crossing new wave, electronic pop, disco-music and punk, with a nod to funk and to French chansonniers like Françoise Hardy. Produced at the Airbase 1000 studios of Turkish-Finnish producer Cem Oral (better known as Jammin Unit, formerly of Air Liquide), "Musique Automatique" is a kaleidoscope of sounds and rhythms, held together almost by miracle: simple structures, cheap little keyboards and a dash of punk energy, but also electronic virtuosity, irreverent reworkings and forays into kitsch. All of it under the banner of pure improvisation, as revealed even by the album's title, drawn from "écriture automatique", the automatic writing of surrealist memory.

The album rests mainly on a handful of charming "chansons" ("L'Amour A 3", "Forever 16", "Je Suis Une Poupee", "Ma Radio"). But the covers of "Nationale 7" (a Charles Trenet classic) and "Le Diable" (a song also performed by Brigitte Bardot) also hit the mark. And at the end, a surprise: the recording of an improbable karaoke contest in a bar, starring the band members themselves.

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25/10/2006