HK119 - HK119

Let's imagine someone got themselves cryogenically frozen back in the fabulous Eighties and woke up in the year of our Lord 2005 - what could we give them to soften the shock of such a temporal leap? We'd administer this little HK 119 disc, which, to be blunt, is among the most useless things you can find on the market today, and our subject would swear he'd only been asleep for a few days.

Forgive the boutade, but sometimes you have to wonder why people would throw money at a product like this - whether it's actually artistic to put the trill of a fax machine or a modem's connection attempt on record is anyone's guess. There's a bit of everything in HK 119, from freeze-dried Kraftwerk to the bleakest dance music and even a touch of existential ring-a-ring-o'-roses reminiscent of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, though never overdone. And if you need a lively track for a good hour of exercise in your bedroom, here's the almost-EBM of "Neurotica" to oblige.

Like any self-respecting revival, the 80s one is starting to take on truly grotesque proportions, bringing to light products that reek of backward-looking referentialism from a mile away. At this point it's up to the good sense of industry insiders, but above all of consumers, to call time on it - at least in its most citation-obsessed and detrimental forms.

Let's be clear, nothing against the artist herself, who comes across as likeable enough in her unlikely hybrid persona somewhere between Madonna, Nina Hagen and Gina X, but do we really need the synthetic pop of "Last Nation" or "23.45"? No way around it, HK 119 is a piece of crap record, and if anyone tries to sell it to you as the last word in alternative dancefloor cool, throw Ramazzotti back at them (a punch would be more like it) as the supreme example of decadent romanticism.

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30/04/2026