BIOMUTANTEN /AS LES VAMPYETTES)

This is a collaboration of Holger Czukay with the famous German producer Conny Planck. Both of these tracks haven't appeared on any regular album, so this single is well worth having on its own, and because it has fairly recently been re-released by Herbert Grönemeyer's Grönland Records, it should be easy to get it.

This was recorded after Holger's monumental "Movies" solo project after leaving Can. The music is fascinating; produced in 1980 there's a certain minimalist experimental new wave spin to it. Holger at the time apparently said something like he wanted to start a "horror with comfort" singles series with this, although the rest of the series didn't materialize. In any case the horror theme is very dominant. Biomutanten is about somebody being attacked by mutant monsters. There's a manipulated deep slow horror voice speaking on both tracks, both of which are carried by slow monotonous rhythmic bass and sound motifs. As usual for Holger Czukay (and Conny Planck is a congenial partner in this), the music takes its appeal from the sound alchemy woven into the horror atmosphere, which, different from "Movies" is not pieced together from short wave radio recordings but rather consists of a wealth of subtle electronoc noises, amply fitting the horror theme.

I'd have wished that more prog artists would've been able to connect with the changes of the musical landscape of the early eighties in the way in which Holger and Conny do it here; they produce something (at the time) genuinely new, having progressed away from excessive jams and other characteristics of the seventies, but the elements that they use from the new era are of an experimental leftfield nature, industrial sounds and a straight decluttered structure as a basis for creating an uneasy threatening atmosphere, rather than trying to please a record company by going commercial and easily consumable. This is fun stuff, worth 3.5 stars for the listening experience, rounded to 4 for its uniqueness.