GUIDO MÖBIUS - Gebirge
LP/CD Karaoke Kalk KALK 49
Steetdate: May 8
http://www.karaokekalk.de
http://www.myspace.com/guidomoebius

First of all: Gebirge sounds quite different from everything we know by Guido Möbius. His first two albums klisten (Klangkrieg) and dishoek (Dekoder) featured melodies on a collision course with sounds, styles and idiosyncracies, melancholy and humour. Everything was interwoven, multi-layered and contrasting. But despite their complexity and their finesse neither of the two records sounds severe or academic, instead they delight with genial and intelligent instrumental music.

Whereas these two predecessors operate to a great extent without any beats or basses, Guido Möbius makes full use of the latter on Gebirge. Here they are: straight bassdrums, sub-basses and handclaps. Also present: all kinds of machinery noises serving as snaredrum-surrogates, clanking metal, spluttering cables and funk-guitars. Furthermore: brass sections that sound as if the inmates of a tuberculosis sanatorium had reluctantly reached for their trumpets. It is out of these elements that Guido Möbius constructs rough, creaking tracks who despite their strangeness promt the swinging of your hips any time. After all Gebirge was greatly inspired by Möbius' live sets who fervently dovetail funk with experiment, noise and techno.

And yet Gebirge holds another surprise: Vocals. Möbius has won 4-track-virtuoso Andreas Gogol aka go:gol (a-Musik) as a lead singer for his new album. go:gol, a multi-instrumentalist himself with a preference for grotesque sound constructions, employs a multitude of onomatopoeic, imaginary tongues on Gebirge. Which at times sounds as if James Brown's body had received Kurt Schwitters' soul. Both go:gol's fake english and his Dada-funk are a great amusement.

And yet also with his third album Guido Möbius has remained true to himself in many respects. For example in the matter of subtleness: if Möbius sends one of his tracks on its journey you'll never know where that journey might end. And it's enormous fun to follow its musical mutations. The Berlin musician masters the art of subtly slipping us radical sounds and keeping a track in its flow even with the hardest breaks.

Like this an industrial-groove mutates into a main-floor-rave and eventually into a beatboxing-solo. Meditative slash krauty guitar-string-hammering turns out to be the priming for a tight beat. Which again runs into playfully filtered organ grooves which again sound the bell for technorock and polyphonic brass arrangements. But whoever may think he's got it sussed out now is wrong. Because even surprise stays out at a certain point of our journey through the mountains of Gebirge. All of a sudden there's a song who's just that, a song, with verse, bridge and chorus.

Guido Möbius is one of those musicians you can positively recognize by their sound. At that it doesn't matter whatever musical stops Möbius is pulling out or what instruments or stylistics he's applying. His wit, his sobriety, his wealth of ideas and his very own musical dialect attest his authorship.