This album is in fact credited to Barbara Morgenstern and Collaborators, and it’s fair to say that the roll-call of collaborators is impressive, to say the least, representing as it does an array of well-known names in the field of European avant-gardism and experimental music.
Julia Kent, Judrun Gut, Jacaszek, Lucrecia Dalt, are amongst a veritable host of guests featured here. And while Morganstern, celebrated in her own right, is the common element to all of the tracks, each is very much a collaborative effort, the influence and input of her cowriters and coproducers every bit equal to her own. And while the results are expectedly varied, there are some great moments to be found here.
Slinky, subdued Euro-electro doesn’t come much more deft in execution than on the sparse ‘Was Du Nicht Siehst’. Perhaps more than any track I’ve heard this year, it captures the sound and the feel of the early 80s. Perhaps it’s because it doesn’t feel synthetic, or like it’s trying too hard, and balances the sheen of the decade’s emerging production with the grain of early 80s synth sounds. Or perhaps it’s something altogether less tangible, the merging of minds, in this instance hose of Morgenstern and T. Raumschmiere.
‘Meins Sollte Meins Sein’, created with Hauschka, is gloriously haunting in its sparse piano arrangement and breathy vocal delivery, while Gudrun Gut’s languid beats underpin quietly scathing lyrics on ‘Too Much’, which finds Morgenstern lay down a litany of criticisms of her lover or some other party who can do no right: ‘You are not proud enough / you are too vain / You are too pushy, too ignorant… too stiff, too stressed… Too scattered / too messy / not focussed enough…’
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The laid-back, soft-focus electropop of ‘Ubermorgen’ is easy on the ear to the point of feeling a little too effortless, and ‘No One Nowhere Cares’ is content to drift by undemandingly, although a similarly subdued approach works well on the dreamy ‘Facades’ (with Julia Kent) and the softly melancholic ‘Aglow’ (with Coppé).
A bit of a mixed bag it may be, but variety is the spice of life, and Barbara Morgenstern shows she knows how to keep the flavours flowing.
Barbara Morgenstern Online
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