LALI PUNA - Silver Light

After the rare qualities of “Our Inventions” (2010, Morr Music), the usual scattered collaborations here and there, and two well-assembled 7-inches, “Remember” from 2010 and “Move On” from 2011, Lali Puna - Christian Heiß, Christoph Brandner, Markus Acher and Valerie Trebeljahr - return to the cut-and-paste approach they hold dearest. The same approach that back in 2001, at the dawn of their bestseller “Scary World Theory” (Morr Music), led the press across half of Europe to describe them as “the band that makes lyrical-harmonic simplicity the strength of its music”, making them one of the most talked-about discoveries of the early Noughties.

Although the element of surprise is undeniably gone, and even considering that three quarters of the record is given over to remixes, the songwriting and command of language take on a renewed youthfulness today on “Silver Light”.

Anyone who thought their 2001 revisiting of the Oakey/Moroder classic in Human League style, “Together in Electric Dreams”, was the peak of strangeness one could expect from Lali Puna will have to think again. Originally the work of that small genius of electronics-applied-to-occultism named Mort Garson (1924/2008), “I've Been Over The Rainbow” (taken from the 1968 album “The Wozard Of Iz”) is a faint, gentle little vignette that wouldn't look out of place in one of those commercials where family life is just a fairy tale.

The fact that it originally belonged to a sprightly Canadian with a passion for spiritualism, who also liked to call himself Lucifer, makes this find all the more intriguing.

But it's in the remixes that things get even more interesting. Cornelius reshapes “Hostile To Me” in his own image. If at the outset it was a little poem of just over two minutes that strongly recalled the work of Japan's Tenniscoats, it now becomes a cosmic lullaby for children full of imagination. “Move On”, remixed by Baths, tastefully steers Notwist's “Neon Golden” towards Mouse On Mars's “Distroia”, or thereabouts. The closing “Safe Tomorrow”, reworked by Odd Nosdam, attempts a homespun kraut approach with a “kindergarten” version of the mephistophelic German school of ambient.

Overall, a solid effort; and if you're also a Lali Puna collector, all the better.

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08/11/2012