VOLUME THREE

Kosmischer Läufer is a new twist on the retro concept - pretending to come from the past while mimicking a pioneering musical style. The three albums released by this artist are (actually superb) recreations of the early 1970's music of Neu!, Kraftwerk and Cluster. For myself, there just wasn't enough of the 'motorik' genre produced historically, so I applaud this impressive hoax.

The story on the band's website is that the music was created by 'Martin Zeichnete', an East German contemporary of the above bands, who produced it for the secret Olympic training programme of the DDR. The tapes were eventually recovered and released by the vendor company, Unknown Capability Recordings.

The high production quality of these recordings makes a DDR origin implausible for anyone who made even the briefest visit to that state. (I can claim, at least, to have ridden in a Wartburg vehicle.) And the regular album release programme, with musical development from one album to another, tells you this is a modern artist.

But never mind that, this music is very pleasant and creative. Volume Two is my favourite of the releases so far, but all are genuinely recommended to motorik fans.

Verdict: zum Spass.

KOPIE! no way more than 3 stars just on principle and integrity This is lovely stuff but it is so much imitation as to be a bit eyebrow raising....Put it this way, if any of these Krautrock bands and songs were hits originally and made money, they would sue this artist for plagiarism to get paid. He is basically doing his take of Neu! and Autobahn by Kraftwerk. There is a YouTubist that does quick three minutes videos like "how to write a Cure or Smiths song" in 30 seconds and gives a lovely and funny demonstration of the parts needed. This feels like that. That said, I find the pastiche to be well produced and very lovely. So, if you don't care where your Kraftwerk or Neu! come from, this cover band is better than most! The production is impeccable. I guess one could call these original songs, but literally for example if a Neu! or TD song had sections 1-2-3 just copy them nearly exactly and then change the order to 3-1-2, that type of thing. Nothing original here but it does speak to the beauty of the original works quite nicely. I was almost fooled at first then got to thinking no way the DDR music was this good or they would not have failed as a society. Keep in mind this is a modern side project whereby the artist pretended to "discover" old archival tapes of music used to train the minds of the East German Olympic teams back in the 70s, but that is all just made-up.