Schnulz

No other band can pull off something like this: combing cheesy pop ballads (which is exactly what the German word “Schnulze”, shortened here to “schnulz” as if it were an English verb, means) with sounds that can only be described as noise – and making perfect, enjoyable musical sense of it. Featured saxophonist Adrian Gormley is capable of free-jazzy skronk as well as lush lyricism, and the core DWM group of Joseph B. Raimond, Michael Wurzer, and Stefan Schweiger are equally capable of turning disco beats into children's songs on weird drugs, or conjuring up the ghost of a harmonica in a 'noise blues' song of sorts even when there is definitely no harmonica present in the mix.

Very little of this is rock, but a lot of it is kraut – in the sense that the pieces on this album, as with most of DWM's material, do not function like rock songs, but develop like krautrock suites or dance tracks. But there is another element at play in almost all the tracks here, which is the true DWM hallmark, and that is the humour. It's present in the dada-flavoured title puns (“Sitting Bullshit”), but much more so in the structure of the music. Surely the slowing down of a mid-tempo disco track to a druggy haze (and many other aspects of this record) could be understood as mere parody of a genre, but that kind of misses the point. DWM love music in all of its aspects and many of its genres way too much to waste their time with something as negative as parody. They are totally serious in their playful dedication to their music. Even when they schnulz, they schnulz with all of their heart in it. But they are clever (and modest) enough not to take themselves too seriously. It's not about the musicians, it's about the music – which is also why DWM are constantly open to collaboration.


File under: improvisation, psychedelic, krautrock