Sunday, September 07, 2008

Titmachine, appropriately-named band

Damn, that was fast Dave. I should crack the whip on you more often.

It took some googling for me to realize I had, in fact, heard the A-side of this 7” before—a friend had posted a video online for Palais Schaumberg’s original version of this song (“Wir bauen eine neue stadt” in German, that's "We Build a New City" for all ya'll American-speakers) somewhere for the Teutonic hilarity of the dancing. Then the song went in one ear and out the other, but now,
Titmachine's sternly mechanical take on it forced me to listen. This 7” invokes all the bracing androgyny of Kleenex or fellow Netherlanders the Ex, with a bleak, gray Iron Curtain backdrop. Lunging ahead, all martial drums, menacing basslines, air-raid siren keyboard wails, and dementedly childlike vocals, this record is decidedly stronger on atmospherics than songcraft. But I like the headspace it puts me into for a few minutes, anyway. You know what’s weird? When I heard the B-side of this record, my first thought was, literally, “this would have been a far more appropriate soundtrack to the fall of the Berlin Wall than that shitty Jesus Jones song.” The name of the B-side turned out to be “1989.” Huh. Something tells me the ladies of Titmachine are on my wavelength.

Available now from Siltbreeze—LB

2 comments:

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Eric O said...

I LOVE TITMACHINE