Artist: Deine Lakaien
Title: Dual +
Genre: Avant-Garde / Darkwave
Release Date: 26th November 2021
Label: Prophecy Productions
Album Review
If anyone can bang out a few cover-versions and make them into high art, it’s DEINE LAKAIEN, a duo who one imagines could make eating cornflakes into a philosophy exercise, and have written a concept album about the experience by noon. Hugely respected and highly singular, the idea of an album involving covers, and new songs influenced by these, felt safe in the hands of Veljanov and Horn. And so, critically applauded recent album ‘Dual’ was born, with ‘Dual +’ as the more compact and diverse follow-up.
Hard to imagine a more beautiful opening track than ‘Cradle Song’, the warm, lush vocal gliding effortlessly around a simple melody, a lullaby of hope and protection and suddenly appropriate given current shocking events. ‘Nightfall’ couldn’t sound any more DEINE LAKAIEN if its little life depended on it - simple yet complex, gorgeous yet sinister, dark yet shot through with dazzling glimpses of light. ‘Self-Seeker’ goes wandering off into gloriously bizarre territory, that almost unique niche of avant-garde the band have inhabited whenever the mood has caught them. It’s infinitely satisfying to hear these excursions into the experimental, so far into the career of what essentially began as an art-music-project back in the day - DEINE LAKAIEN know they can write a hit song, but the thirst to stick to the fringes at times is admirable. If only more acts would promote interesting above commercial.
Of the cover versions here REM’s ‘Losing My Religion’ is the only disposable one. It’s a decent enough reading, but the song is so familiar, and the structure so difficult to disconnect from, that it breezes by in a “that’s nice” kind of way that neither helps nor hinders. ‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun’ becomes an altogether more spooky beast than the original here, pulsing with a graceful darkness and an intense loneliness at its icy heart, and the choice of Devo’s ‘Mr DNA’ shows the straight-faced sense of humour and cheekiness that exists behind all the intensity and conceptualising. It’s completely bonkers, both as an original, and as a cover, and works, rather oddly, despite it sticking out of this collection like a wart on an egg.
‘Altruist’ creeps about relentlessly, a strange, unnerving piece, ‘Fork’ picking up the pace and flinging percussion at you, hurling elements of the DEINE LAKAIEN blueprint about like they’re having a mad clear-out in the studio. And to end, the dignified and stirring beauty of ‘Wiegenlied’, a classical and classy example of the depth and quality of what songs can become in the skilled hands of their temporary keepers.
This is a wonderful album, and easily compliments the earlier release of this current creative phase. Impenetrable, playful, respectful, things ease by from melodic and soothing, to harsh and cruel in the ever-changing musical whorl of DEINE LAKAIEN, and the duo continue to lead the way in breath-taking originality and scope.
Tracklist
01. Cradle Song
02. Nightfall
03. Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (Pink Floyd cover)
04. Self-Seeker
05. Run 2nd Version
06. Losing My Religion (REM cover)
07. Mr DNA (Devo cover)
08. Altruist
09. Fork
10. Wiegenlied (Trad. Michail Iwanowitsch Glinka)
Line-up
Alexander Veljanov
Ernst Horn
Website
https://www.deine-lakaien.com / https://www.facebook.com/DeineLakaien
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 8.5
Sound: 8.5
Total: 8.5 / 10
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