Rarely does one come across the phrase “concept album” in techno. But in his latest release the electro veteran Anthony Rother has film scored his own techno-futuristic world and it’s worth taking a detour to visit.
A prolific influence on the revival of electro in 90s Berlin, his latest full length album provides a cinematic soundscape of “Metrowelt.” A place he invented with the original idea of writing a science fiction screenplay.
In his 1997 album “Sex with the Machines,” he begins with “Human Made,” a track featuring a robot that declares: “You’ve got no work/because of me/I’m a machine/I never sleep.” The prophecy of Sex with the Machines is inverted by Metrowelt, a world in which robots have acclimated to our society enough to offer social commentary. In Metrowelt’s second track, “Speech of the Machine,” with its bright synths and maracas, offers a more humorous take on techno-futurism. This robot sounds tired of this human world and it says in a beleaguered, crackling voice: “We don’t need your information/We don’t need no man control/We don’t need no conversation/We don’t need like you a soul.” Parodying Pink Flloyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2,” these robots may be on the verge of a punk-inspired mutiny.
“Awakening” is an arresting opening with steely claps, loose kickdrums, and a syncopating chirp that gives the silver lining. An aching string harmony emerges and highlights the mechanical precision of staccato drums. As the album unfolds we hear glimmers of both funky, squelching synths and natural-sounding string or brass melodies, always against the backdrop of the tight rhythms that scaffold his sound. If Rother’s film has a chase scene, the suspenseful track “Quinn” might accompany it. Building from a singular high-pitched, meandering note, it intensifies against a muted kick and a restless, brassy chord loop.
Rother reaches for a dramatic and blended texture; vocals are replaced by pitchless machines contrasted with synths samples that often blur the line between what sounds organic and what is organic. Backed by a crunchy, tight drum palette throughout, some drum patterns are revisited in later tracks. An ingenious element of this album’s storytelling lies in the way familiar motifs are seamlessly assembled in the final track, “Lucid Dream.”https://anthonyrother.bandcamp.com/album/metrowelt
-Lina Xing
