Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft

The term Electronic Body Music was definitively codified (and printed in plain letters!) on the inner sleeve of "No Comment" (1984) by Belgian outfit Front 242, who wanted to give a clear, precise identity to their increasingly layered and cerebral electronic sound. At the time, however, the Belgian avant-garde school wasn't the only game in town, since EBM had already taken shape elsewhere through the synth-punk minimalism of DAF (closely followed by that of Britain's Nitzer Ebb, among others).

Gabi Delgado (1958-2020), Spanish by birth, came straight out of punk, unlike his Bavarian bandmate Robert Görl (1955), who trained mainly as a pianist after growing up listening to Béla Bartók. Their early London stint, which culminated in a deal with Mute, didn't leave many fond memories, given that DAF's first two records still sound today like two experimental albums, full of deconstructive insights still in embryonic form.

Either way, it took very little time for these ideas to come into focus: it's 1981 when the so-called Körpermusik is born in Düsseldorf, the most authentic and visceral meeting point between body and machine. A sweaty body pushed to its limits, exactly like Gabi Delgado's on the cover of "Alles Ist Gut", because now, with DAF, it's possible to dance nervously, amid a riot of obsessive, repetitive rhythms.

The Spaniard's voice is deliberately dark and monotone, an important clue that lets us set this apart from the technological suggestions of the robotic Kraftwerk, who were likewise standard-bearers of the body-machine pairing ("Die Mensch-Maschine") but with a very different approach.

The instrumental backbone, meanwhile, is handled by Robert Görl, drummer for the occasion but above all the man physically shaping a looped electronic sound, built with a Korg analogue synthesizer and a sequencer. Simple ingredients, but terribly effective ones, which within a few months turned "Alles Ist Gut" into a smash chart hit.

The album was promptly filed under that musical movement known as Neue Deutsche Welle, that distinctly German catch-all born from the meeting of punk and new wave (Gabi and Robert were in excellent company, alongside heavyweights like Nina Hagen, Grauzone, Malaria!, Abwärts and Xmal Deutschland). "Alles Ist Gut", though, sounded different from anything else, if only for the absence of guitar or any instrumental trapping beyond the voice-synthesizer pairing.

Hence the uniqueness of a single like "Der Mussolini", a martial anthem (still very much in demand on dark dancefloors today) often criticised over its rather controversial title. A full-blown provocation, as the two culprits would later explain, aimed at making an impact even through misunderstanding, turning every ambiguity into a filthy but unstoppable engine. Indeed, it's hard to stay still through these four minutes of totalitarian electronic neurosis!

"Alles Ist Gut" is an album steeped in tension: if on "Sato-Sato" DAF's minimalism turns instantly tense and suffocating, you only need to land on the notes of "Alle Gegen Alle" to feel an uncommon ferocity firsthand, a Nietzschean chaos capable of conjuring menacing dancing stars ("our clothes are so black, our boots are so beautiful. A red flash on the left, a black star on the right. Our screams are so loud, our dance is so wild. A new, wicked dance, all against all"). Years later, Laibach would pay tribute to the track with a superb cover.

Furthermore, that of Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft can also be defined as a sexual body, as in the sinuous "Rote Lippen", whose lyrics see the red tones of lips and a dress eventually colour the entire world. A heart beating relentlessly ("Mein Herz Macht Bum"), waiting for seduction to give way to physical contact: a kiss, an embrace growing ever tighter, as if it were the last time (this is the dramatic pace of the morbid yet sublime "Als Wär's Das Letzte Mal").

With the album under examination, the fusion between machine and human being takes a decisive turn, since for DAF technology must serve solely to push one's own body to the fullest, driving it to levels of intensity never reached before. So the sweat trickling down the skin is nothing but the most striking result of this exertion, a trait we'll soon find as a leitmotif running through much of the EBM world (athletic performance, individual sports, physical prowess - the evolution of this genre has never abandoned these themes).

The essence of body music thus slips through these stark (yet devastating) notes, while a brand-new window opens onto the world of industrial and electronic music of that era. Amid leather jackets, synthesizers and pure adrenaline.

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19/02/2023