germany’s kraftwerk have been re-interpreted, remixed and re-imagined many times over – the net result of which is that their legend grows ever larger, thanks to the many artists and writers who consider them to be such a profound influence. the band themselves however have done very little in the last 20 years to propell their story forward – every release since 1986’s ‘electric cafe’ has been a remix / re-tread / live set, sufficient enough to preserve their place in history without any substantial revisions. the latest addition to the cover version canon is mute records’ ‘trans slovenia express vol.2’, released eleven years after the first volume and covering the same philosophical terrain. kraftwerk once described their sound as ‘industrial folk music’ (or “industrielle volksmusik”) , so it does seem strangely fitting that slovenian artists – mining traditions of indigenous folk music and an economy based on heavy industry – should choose this particular route with which to thrust themselves onto the world stage. the collection is diverse – from laibach‘s loose interpretation of the project (i.e. ‘the imaginary sound of kraftwerk remixing a laibach track’) to the foolhardy – iturk rounding the album off with some very poor 4-4. sandwiched between them however are a few gems – silence‘s ‘hall of mirrors’ featuring anne clark, torul‘s ‘it’s more fun to compute’ and octex‘s ‘telephone call’. the two stand-outs however are ‘radioactivity’ by the string quartet rozmarinke (featuring the vocalist from silence) and the stroj‘s ‘metal on metal’. a visit to their respective web sites unearthed the following tracks. for more info on ‘trans slovenia express vol.2’ and to hear sound samples, go to mute.com.
ROZMARINKE [SLOVENIA]
klise
think of contemporary all-girl string quartets and the sad unfortunate truth is that bond springs to mind. an ugly thought, i know. fortunately rozmarinke (‘the rosemaries’) seem to be operating in a dimension entirely removed from such audio detritus. founded in 1994, they’ve forged a strong resume of chamber performances, interspersed with collaborations with slovenia’s contemporary artists such as silence, pax and zaklonis ce prepeva. their extensive work with silence has almost eclipsed their own release schedule; the strange fly in their otherwise impeccable collaborative ointment being their attempted entry into the eurovision song contest in 2004 with a silence-penned instrumental track called ‘clich√©’. sadly, they came second in the slovenian heats, so the rest of the world missed out on seeing that particular nugget. perhaps it was the for the best… [rozmarinke.com]
THE STROJ [SLOVENIA]
transsibiria 720
kung fu
hopefully you’re familiar with test dept, because it will make this lazy comparison a lot easier. scottish performance group test dept made a substantially loud name for themselves in the 1980s – welding metallic percussion performance to large scale theatre pieces, the result of which will remain a high-point in scottish art for some time to come. years later, enter the stroj (pronounced ‘stroy’) – manhandling much the same concept, albeit married with a love of pryotechnics. combined they describe themselves in the third person as an ‘audio rythmical machine’, their performances are ‘urban rituals’ and they ‘call for the listener’s motoric action’. wait, there’s more: “the sounds produced through the machine by the tribe members’ bodily energy should be listened to with whole body, while cyclic structures transfer you into the sound-landscape of trance and ecstasy”. good luck with those mp3s people, see you in the garden for the comedown. [thestroj.com]