Kitty-Yo » tarwater

tarwater

tarwater, aka bernd Jestram and ronald lippokm have been making music together for a while now starting years ago in a punk band under the wary eye of the east german secret police. More recently tarwater have effected a more subtle subversion garnering praise for their latest album silur which combines song structures with spoken word fragments and sub-aquatic electronics. tarwater are creating some of the most adventurous sounds to come out of germany since the heyday of krautrock.

tarwater – animals, suns & atoms

squirm (aka german electronica) is back, and while still not primed for attack, it’s now capable of delivering a crucial payload. arch-squirmers tarwater– an offshoot of the squirmily palindromic to rococo rot– have finally raised the bar. before animals, suns and atoms, i judged squirm by the notwist’s crunchy outsider-electro lp, shrink. released on stereolab’s duophonic label, shrink elevated squirm from two-minute patch-corded interludes to album-length approximations of the unrealized soundclash between can’s schloss n�rvenich acid excursions and our post-drum-n-bass protools culture. frontman ronald lippok lazily states the facts and repercussions of insect disappearance as percussive blips and farfisa-generated choir cloak his reminiscences, while encouraging us to “come on down/ break it up.” with one foot firmly placed in the same puddle of pop irresistibility as britney spears’ swedish producer, and the other in that grand kraut-rock tradition, this track, “all the ants have left paris,” sounds like the perfect combination of high-falutin’ avant-garde expression and low-brow pop thrills. at least, until the following track, “noon,” lollops in and fulfills our dreams of kate bush taking a shot at the genre with warm pianos and swaggering percussion clicks. as lippok mutters, “abuse committed by criminals itself commits a crime,” a female accomplice harmonizes in a zanax fog. underneath, a student learns to play the sitar until a “european son”-like attack of the john cales overcomes his reverence for the instrument, and he throttles it. of course, tarwater, like the camera-wielding kid next door in “american beauty,” are fascinated by this strangulation and give it prominence. “the trees” is a far less energetic track than “ants,” but lippok nonetheless snaps at his dada chorus (“don’t ever antagonize the home”). his strangely unnerving vocals are propelled by a nagging cello and percussive mouth harp as he reveals, “i like to yell when it’s snowing.” i’m sure his neighbors appreciate that. but the band saves their oddest and most surreptitious moments for last. on “seven ways to fake a perfect skin,” tarwater act out their fantasies of becoming one of brian eno’s oblique strategies (or, at the very least, an out-take off here come the warm jets). giddy analog synth loops and plucked harpsichord haunt the background. but tarwater’s frivolity is offset by lippok’s sinister whibble and fake london accent. on animals, suns and atoms, tarwater have finally realized that though analog mood sauce can be spread over phat hip-hop beats, it doesn’t mean it necessarily should be. after all, they have to do better than the notwist’s “day 7″ and “chemicals” at some point. those two superb notwist tracks defined the direction in which squirm should be headed. i want to hear outsider vocals accompanied by skewed, electronic cracks, blips, and a hearty gutbucket of hip-hop funk. i’m thrilled that lippok and jestram have picked up on the notwist tactic. tarwater have easily equaled shrink in terms of effectiveness and creativity. they’ve captured the funk of ege bam yasi-era can, run it through with a provocative dub disquiet, and ended up with an album that marks new heights in electronic music. here is an album i’ll return to frequently. it’s your squirm now! (text by paul cooper)

mp3: finetunes

cd: kitty-yo popstore

tarwater – silur

the primeval opener, “visit,” sets the tone for the entire album, marked by slow crackly funereal beats, vague droning orchestral samples, and spoken- word lyrics contributed by t-rex’s marc bolan. this song is reminscent of much of the music on labradford’s brilliant self- titled debut, particularly in its sonic and lyrical attentiveness to the landscape it purports to move through. “to moauf” seems to subvert the squirm of to rococo rot by layering their trademark twittering electronics over distant bongos and eerie drones, thereby giving the whole affair a much more windblown and ghostly aura. “the watersample” is probably the centerpiece of silur, a spoken- word meditation on beach detritus (c.f. t.s. eliot’s “the dry salvages” for a more thorough take on ocean litter), set to crackly flutes, piano, vibes, guitar and vocal samples. the repetitive but oddly alluring “seafrance cezanne” returns to the plate- techtonics groove of the opening track. the title cut is merely an american girl reciting a brief narrative about nightswimming to the faintest buzz of electronic noise. but it’s unfortunately succeeded by the sucky german trip-hop of “no more extra time” which breaks the potent sea- spell of the first five tunes. the sparse acoustic guitar and noise duo of “otomo” briefly returns us to land’s end, but the dropoff occurs. sadly, the album becomes an erratic mix of push- button electronica and ill- fated clubland sing- alongs. the brief “to describe you” recaptures the siren song of the disc’s first half but its gentle work is regrettably undone by the closing piece, “v-at”– a minor synth- pop cut- up to roll over the closing credits, i suppose. t.s. eliot reminds us that “we cannot think of a time that is oceanless/ or an ocean that is not littered with wastage.” i guess even in the watery eden of the silurian age, a little garbage must fall. (text by brett s. sirota)

mp3: finetunes

cd: kitty-yo popstore

tarwater – dwellers on the threshold

dwellers on the threshold is the fourth tarwater lp, and it doesn’t really mark much of an advance from prior releases. the songs are a little more clearly defined than on their much-heralded breakthrough album, 1999′s silur, but that’s not all to the good. there’s not quite as much playfulness in the integration of soundtracks, spoken lyrics, and assorted noise inserts. and where 2000′s animals, suns & atoms started an evolution toward almost-pop melodies, dwellers on the threshold doesn’t really advance that progression. a few songs “1985,” “perfect shadow” have the makings of memorable hooks, but most of them settle for repetitive chord sequences that tend to blend together. of course, that seems to be the intent. the cd’s title apparently refers to jestram and lippok’s ambivalence about songwriting per se — wherever the line between pop craftsmanship and ambient atmospherics may be, tarwater is most comfortable straddling it. so what we get is an unhurried exercise in genre stretching, with tubular bells and whistles, gentle guitar runs, and a lot of lou reed-style muttering. it’s hard to say what the songs are about, specifically, but there’s a general sense of post-millennial blurring — of borders, of cultures, of musical approaches. like a lot of music coming out of europe these days (and asia and africa, for that matter — pretty much everywhere except the us) tarwater’s albums are more defined by era than geography. their german roots are unmistakable, but the sound is international; and not just because the lyrics are in english i can imagine the disc playing in any hip juice or bubble tea bar in the world. it is, maybe, what post-imperial culture sounds like. (text by jesse fox mayshark)

mp3: finetunes

cd/lp: kitty-yo popstore

tarwater – not the wheel
‘not the wheel’ is a limited edition polish release (so not obscure at all then) which collates the work for films and compilations that germany’s tarwater have produced.