CAMERA - Prosthuman

In an era when realities shift in the blink of an eye, Berlin's Camera prove they have no fear of embracing transformation, making their own a famous maxim of the seer Karlheinz Stockhausen: "New methods change experience. New experiences change man."

For their fifth album, the band led by drummer/guitarist Michael Drummer had to weather the departure of virtuoso keyboardists Steffen Kahles and Timm Brockmann — long the group's backbone — opening up a difficult process of internal change, which was resolved through the permanent addition of Tim Schröder, previously responsible for the band's visual side and unexpectedly revealed to be a skilled keyboardist, joined afterwards by the contribution of Alex Kozmidi, a gifted guitar virtuoso.

It's therefore understandable that the sonic palette has also undergone a significant restyling, reshaping Camera's typical sound, based on a classic kraut-rock foundation occasionally spiced up with psychedelic touches.

New contaminations from new wave, space-rock, folk and even dub-reggae have found their way, to commendable effect, into structures that still retain Camera's typical motorik sequences.

The album kicks off at a gallop with "Kartoffelstampf", firing off acid guitars and pulsing bass point-blank: an encounter between Can and Loop set in the underworld. The rhythm turns spectral on "Alar Alar", where the peculiar blend of reggae and cosmic music proves seductive, while the title track, paired with its appendix "Apptime", opens up more synthetic territory, briefly exiling the guitars in favour of bright, clean electronics, before suddenly calling them back in for the finale.

"Überall Teilchen/Teilchen Überall" is a free-form kosmische musik delirium, a jam tied together by a vocal sample slowly overwhelmed by layers of livid electronics and bizarre psych nuggets à-la West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.

New wave surfaces on "Freundschaft" with its tangled melody advancing over a rationally-minded pop emotionality; a rough diamond that seems to come from the hidden grooves of early New Order, until the driving "El Ley" arrives to unleash all its kraut-rock propulsion.

Things get more complicated on "Schmwarf", a spasmodic, extravagant groove that clearly nods to the distinctive Berlin sound, dark, provocative, eccentric and thrilling. "A2" strides confidently down the same grimy alleys, built around a free-roaming lead guitar line, waiting for the gorgeous "Chords4 / Kurz Vor" to clear the scene with the plasticky purity of synthetic sounds, before letting guitar sketches scrawl in more unruly patterns, closing with the lovable urban pulse of "Harmonite", loosened up by dazzling synths and small touches of sax.

"Prosthuman" is a dazzling diary with neither a fixed beginning nor a fixed end; a creative flow that has no wish to drag itself along with leftover tricks, but tries instead to flow within the current toward a well-defined direction. A stylistic shift imposed by circumstance or pursued with determination, proof that variations and frictions can become useful allies in the search for a stimulating new creativity.

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23/02/2021