Reflections of Darkness - Music Magazine - DAF

Details: Written by: Sebastian Huhn; Published: 12 January 2009

Kulturfabrik, Krefeld, Germany
9th January 2009
Tyske Ludder, DAF

What’s best on a cold, cold winter’s night when you’re even freezing you’re hands off with your gloves on? A sweat inducing concert and the only DAF show of the "Der 30-jährige Krieg - als wär's das letzte Mal" tour in the Ruhr area promised to be such an event and besides, when you’re getting a chance to see a cult formation like DAF you don’t pass it up.

Tyske Ludder

TYSKE LUDDER formed at the beginning of the 1990s. The phrase TYSKE LUDDER means German whore in Danish and Norwegian. Until the mid 90s, they pulled out the three albums ‘Bombt die Mörder’, ‘Creutzfeld’ and ‘Dalmarnock’ complemented by scarce live performances as the third leg of the TYSKE LUDDER concept. At the dawn of the new millennium, the project entered a silent period due to various artistic differences on the further development of the concept. In 2004, they started to work on new material coinciding with their live comeback in the same year. The new album ‘Sojus’ eventually was released beginning of 2006 followed by a re-release of the first three albums with additional bonus material in autumn. ‘SCIENTific technOLOGY’ is their most recent release which came out in April 2008. TYSKE LUDDER is Albert (vocals, performance), Olaf (synths) and Z67 (percussions, shouts). http://www.tyske-ludder.de/ / http://www.myspace.com/tyskeludder

Music & Performance
It was up to the German trio TYSKE LUDDER to warm up the crowd for what’s to come a while later. Musically they presented an all the way danceable set with songs comprising stomping beats as well as gloomy synth layers. For an additional rhythmic accent they had a drummer treating an electronic drum set. While it was musically a rather typical mixture, they definitely transported a political and social message and in this were totally on the same page with the headliner DAF. For instance there is the pushing track ‘Thetanen’ in which they’re stating their opinion against Scientology, telling them they’ve seen through their masquerade.

Quite fitting here was a video projection at the beginning of the track showing Tom Cruise holding a speech. But also their tracks like ‘An vorderster Front’ or ‘Bionic Impression’ were visually supported by quite plain videos, while Albert marched back and forth over the stage to bring in his growling vocals, supported on many songs by drummer Z67, heating up the crowd with shouts. And the people seemed to like it and danced heavily.

Rating
Music: 6
Performance: 7
Sound: 6
Light: 6
Total: 6.3 / 10

DAF

DAF - ‘Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft’ - is a band that can be counted amongst the pioneers and influences for such genres as Electro Punk, Techno or the so called ‘Neue Deutsche Härte’. The unpolished, raw sound they’ve developed should as well be defining for the emerging EBM genre. The album ‘Die kleinen und die Bösen’ from 1980 can be named as prime example for this and was and is a milestone for the EBM movement, released by Daniel Miller’s Mute label. Shrank to the duo Robert Görl / Gabi Delgado-López, the band continued working on new material which found its way on the two albums ‘Alles ist gut’ (1981) and ‘Für Immer’ (1982) with which they finally made their breakthrough.

Some of the songs like ‘Der Mussolini’, Die Götter sind Weiß’ or ‘Ein bisschen Krieg’ cause controversies with their provoking lyrics and more than once the two were exposed to hostilities of being fascists. When ‘Für Immer ‘was released in 1982, DAF had already called it quits and every member pursued solo activities. However an album called ‘1st Step to Heaven’ was released under the DAF moniker, it was only intended for the US market and should be the only musical sign of that band until 2003 when they reunited and released ‘15 neue DAF Lieder’ as well as went on world tour after which they broke up again. www.myspace.com/deutschamerikanischefreundschaft
/ http://www.myspace.com/delgadogoerl

Music & Performance
During the rebuilding break I was like “Wow, these are not as many people as I’ve expected, still so much space.” and speaking of much space. The stage setup was pretty minimal as well. Only a full drum kit (not an electronic one by the way), some devices on the right and one microphone stand in the middle and that’s it. Turns out the two don’t need much more to throw a good party. So, eventually the lights turned down and to some repetitive noisy stuff, Görl and Delgado, the heroes of the evening, entered the stage. Görl took up position behind the drums and soon after the intro was finished they started the set right away with ‘Verschwende deine Jugend’ - one of their most popular tracks and I swear to god, I’ve never seen a crowd going nuts like this one.

During ‘Ich und die Wirklichkeit’, there was some minor technical disturbance due to a hanging CD. After that had happened for the second time they just moved on to the next song and from there on everything went fine. With ‘Der Mussolini’ quite early in the set came an absolute super hit of the duo and what I didn’t consider possible happened: the mood increased considerably, blasted through the ceiling, actually and no matter where you turned your head, everybody’s dancing and most of all poging, which found its continuation in songs like ‘Sato-Sato’, and especially ‘Alle gegen Alle’ what seemed to be a call for action and Delgado looked at all this with obvious satisfaction and stated many times how much fun this show in Krefeld is.

He’s right! It was like one big party even though some of the songs like ‘Liebeszimmer’ or ‘Osten währt am längsten’ were rather down-tempo, but still they’ve kind of an energetic flow inside them that forces you to move even without the commanding chants of Delgado, who also was always willing to share his water with the audience, without bottle of course. I would have loved to see this incredible show to the end - I heard later that the band played even 4 encores - but my train wouldn’t wait and I already had to hurry to catch it and with minor complications reached the train station. I hope there’ll be another chance to see them in the not too distant future.

Setlist
01. Gewalt (Intro)
02. Verschwende Deine Jugend
03. Ich und die Wirklichkeit
04. Verlier' nicht den Kopf
05. Der Mussolini
06. Ich will
07. Muskel
08. Knochen auf Knochen
09. Rote Lippen
10. Osten
11. Mein Herz macht Bum!
12. Opium (Liebeszimmer)
13. Sato Sato
14. Alle gegen Alle
15. Nachtarbeit
16. Heckler und Koch
17. Die Lüge
18. Als wärs das letzte Mal
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19. Der Räuber und der Prinz (1. encore)
20. Algorythmus (2. encore)
21. Kebabträume (3. encore)
22. Alles ist gut (4. encore)

Rating
Music: 9
Performance: 9
Sound: 8
Light: 6
Total: 8.3 / 10