Artist: Elias Matt & (the) Rescue Mission
Title: Achtung! Alpha
Genre: Retro Electro-Pop
Release Date: 11th February 2011
Label: Wannsee Records
Album Review
A German formation ELIAS MATT & (THE) RESCUE MMISSION releases their debut album ‘Achtung! Alpha’. Elias Matt interweaves his own odd personality and unusual biography with this work and set the alpha personality as the main topic.
From the very beginning the album justifies its genre definition - the intro ‘Achtung! (Try to Stay Healthy...)’ already demonstrates a very retro sound which is retained through the whole album. ‘No, No, No!’ is performed in a form of a dialog between male and female vocals representing a man and a woman discussing their relations. The same device is also used in such songs as ‘Stand Up When They Beat The Drum’ and ‘Things You Shouldn't Think About’. Beautiful instrumental solo in the end of ‘Too Young For The Big Sleep’ becomes another distinctive feature of the band. The minimalist key melody is absorbed by the noise sounds bit by bit and then suddenly flourishes into the uplifting enchanting tune. ‘Universal Healing’ with its catchy melody, ‘Stand Up When They Beat The Drum’ with its crisp marching rhythm, and melodious robotic ‘European Decadence Express’ have all the chances to fill the dance floors, to my mind. In the following ‘European Decadence’ Elias Matt takes a critical look at European history and comes to a deplorable conclusion that “Everything we have Is an art of being great” and “You have to stay rich”.
The eerie samples of the intro of ‘Chocolate Cloud’ together with brittle voice of Stefanie Sagert create more melancholic mood and ‘Things You Shouldn't Think About’ keeps up this tendency: commencing as a quite lively track, in the end it drowns into intense and gloomy synth wave, reflecting the structure of the album itself, which bright and playful mood in the beginning gradually sinks into melancholic and sombre atmosphere. Leisurely and viscous ‘Keep Me Back From Fire’ darkens the air even more and flows into the next ‘Reach Out’ that passes through with impressive atmospheric soundscape in the ending, blended into a piano passage that ends with a s shrilly sounds resembling an alarm. The final ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out’ is a sluggish calm track, perfectly conveying extremely desperate and hopeless atmosphere sustained by the lyrics, that speak for itself: “And if a double-decker bus crashes into us To die by your side Is such a heavenly way to die And if a ten ton truck kills the both of us To die by your side Well the pleasure and the privilege is mine”.
Although last tracks of the album sound more modern due to enriching the synth textures with wider and more extensional sound spectrum, all the songs preserve the cold distant air of the 70th and early 80th and the fact that the band use analogue synthesizer of the early 70s, that are said to be given by the KRAFTWERK legends Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, plays not the last part here. All in all, ‘Achtung! Alpha’ presents a good debut work, which will certainly find its admirers.
Tracklist
01. Achtung! (Try to Stay Healthy ...)
02. No, No, No!
03. Too Young For The Big Sleep
04. Universal Healing
05. Stand Up When They Beat The Drum
06. European Decadence Express
07. European Decadence
08. Chocolate Cloud
09. Things You Shouldn't Think About
10. Keep Me Back From Fire
11. Reach Out
12. There Is A Light That Never Goes Out
Line-up
Elias Matt
Denny Hellbach
Stefanie Sagert
Burchard Gonko
Website
http://www.eliasmatt.de/ / www.myspace.com/eliasmattppe
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 7
Sound: 7
Extras: -
Total: 7 / 10
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