1991: Malaria! - Compiled

Malaria!’s 1983 track “Thrash Me” (key lyric: “thrash me for my pleasure”) would be the best place to start dismantling all those Berlin clichés on their behalf, were they not probably impossible to tear down now (like art posters clinging to lampposts in strips, not like walls or anything). In the early 80s, the band members were indeed young and radical. They played at Studio 54. They wrote a song about the holocaust called “Geh Duschen” (take a shower). They took the opportunity to film burning cars outside vocalist and saxophonist Bettina Koester’s apartment in Kreuzberg, knowing that it would be the next best thing to the music video they couldn’t afford to make. Also during that ‘crazy time,’ Bettina Koester claims to have been propositioned by Catherine Deneuve, who was wearing a slinky red dress, natürlich. So far, not so bad for the few short years that Compiled revisits: namely 1981 to 1984, when the band were together.

Also, almost accidentally — or so it seems — they fashioned some amazing new wave electronica out of very few elements by today’s standards: essentially the traditional rock quartet plus saxophone and keyboard synths. The reason these efforts still startle may be because it is now the rage to praise the spectacle of chubby fists connecting with primitive keyboards straight out of the ark/attic, or it may be that the band actually did something that still sounds fresh today. Perhaps my jaded, elitist ears deceive me, but I think it’s the latter. By way of comparison, the Chicks on Speed remix of “Kaltes Klares Wasser” is boring, an attempt to salvage the menace of a counterculture that’s not their own. The original has a real bassline that moves around shattered glass piano, a noodling synth and the strident voices of Bettina & Co., but the chicks harvest something vaguely exotic from the German phrases, meanwhile abandoning all the fervor of Malaria!’s version. The harsh electronic edge that seems so pioneering on Compiled is actually enhanced by elements that could easily be overlooked because they’re traditional: Bettina Koester’s voice and saxophone playing. “Your Turn to Run” happily marries these disparate elements: stealthy, but skillful drumming with an incongruous yet catchy handclap beat; no wave jangly guitars, driven by a Velvet Underground-style riff; the brazenness of Bettina Koester’s voice and saxophone with Gudrun Gut’s arthouse whispering (check out her smooth, late night radio voice on a recent podcast).

“You You” on the other hand sounds less experimental today, as it wears its darkwave influences on its sleeve (the band played with Siouxsie & The Banshees and New Order) in lines like “You love degradation” over a standard melodic synth-led verse chorus structure. Malaria! could also be plain abrasive sometimes, especially on the tracks that didn’t make it onto the album.

Almost every song on Compiled is more than the sum of its influences though. One striking idea is being worked out all the time, such as on “Einsam” (loneliness), where a keyboard riff courts a flat saxophone inside a cathedral of echo-y synths and huge, stadium rock drumbeats. This is followed by the rousing, recognizably European number that is “Macht” — with a folk time signature that suggests something either raunchy or sinister — and later on the last track “Gewissen,” where children’s voices insist on something in German while Bettina Koester is joined in her declamations by a man’s baritone over a repetitive, spooky piano. These ‘declamations’ are probably one of the cooler things about Malaria!, as they sound authoritative in that serious Germanic way that all English graduates foggily cherish in their memories of epic poetry seminars. These days, female vocalists in electronic bands tend towards the bouncily non-committal (hello, YACHT) or they brandish their alternative sexual preferences in a threatening manner (Gaga, Peaches, The Chicks et al.). Though Malaria! undoubtedly did make audiences uncomfortable in their time (see an interview with their forerunners in Mania D, who recall male fans aggressively suggesting ways of turning the band members back into ‘normal’ girls), they mostly come across as a band’s band who happened to be, quite literally, ‘all-woman.’

DeLorean

There’s a lot of good music out there, and it’s not all being released this year. With DeLorean, we aim to rediscover overlooked artists and genres, to listen to music historically and contextually, to underscore the fluidity of music. While we will cover reissues here, our focus will be on music that’s not being pushed by a PR firm.

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