AUTOMAT - Automat

The Bureau B operation has rarely been discussed around here. It's essentially an offshoot of Tapete, the latter best known to most for having Lloyd Cole in its catalogue, and which for close to a decade now has been giving kraut-rock a genuine second youth through the most varied means: reissues of out-of-print historic titles, an almost total monopoly on the contemporary output of the genre's founding fathers, and the parallel cultivation of a "nursery" of young acts fascinated by the cosmic Seventies. A kind of media library for what is perhaps the most substantial treasure that the German extra-classical tradition can boast, one that over the years - unlike what happened to the output of equally significant European scenes, above all British industrial - has been so jealously preserved that it has reached the present day intact.

There could be no better occasion for a focus on the Bureau B catalogue than the debut of Automat, a marvel of a trio made up of three veterans: guitarist Jochen Arbeit (Die Haut but above all Einstürzende Neubauten), drummer Achim Färber and Sovetskoe Foo bassist Zeitbloom. A record that the Hamburg-based label has launched with a genuinely major campaign, treating it as the flagship release of the first half of this year. All this while simultaneously putting out reissues from names of the calibre of Conrad Schnitzler, Cluster (and their respective solo projects), Ulrich Schnauss and Schneider TM: important releases that nevertheless haven't managed to take priority over this brand-new blend of muddy psychedelia and memories from the most whirling, vibrant side of the golden kraut era.

The shadow of Faust and Can looms on and off over the sound of a record on which the band itself has essentially invested all the creative drive built up over the last three years, going so far as to enlist among its guests three heavyweights such as Lydia Lunch, Blixa Bargeld and even His Lordship Genesis P-Orridge. The glittering, nostalgic opening instrumentals are the perfect manifesto for a project that digs into the past while updating it for the present: "THF" carries a groove that recalls just a little too closely the atomic mutations of Irmin Schmidt, "SHF" apes it by opening with cyclical tolling bells, seasoning it all with acid beats borrowed from Perc. "TXL" is perhaps the only instance of genuine quotation, driven by a melodic framework that evokes an Asmus Tietchens under the influence of powerful hallucinogens.

Among the most distinctive aspects of "Automat" is its nature, proudly flaunted in the liner notes, as a guitar-bass-drums trio, with an almost total rejection of synths: the closing sprawl of "GWW", where guitar nebulae harmonized through pedals alone are punctuated by near-tribal tolling, serves in this sense as an unimpeachable display of mastery. The three collaborative tracks deserve a separate discussion: "The Streets" stages a post-industrial bash whose queen, however, is Lunch, while the spot given over to Orridge's recital is the elegant, mechanical mantra of "Mount Tamalpais". Even more surprising is the fruit of the collaboration with Bargeld on the pure trip odyssey of "Am Schlachtensee", something that this time seems to have been wrenched, absurdly, straight from Psychic Tv.

Despite forty years on its shoulders, the lifeblood of kraut-rock is anything but spent.

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03/05/2014