Labels: Denovali
Review by: Captain Fidanza
When you’re the first to do something, everything else is just a version of you, there’s no getting away from it, that’s just how it is.
On Tuesday 26th June 1990, in the last minute of extra-time in England’s goalless second round game against Belgium in Bologna, the most naturally talented English footballer of all time, picked up the ball deep inside his own half and started a run which carried him a good sixty yards downfield and was only halted by a clumsy challenge from the Belgian right back, Eric Gerets. The resulting free-kick, also taken by the most naturally talented English footballer of all time, was chipped in to the right hand side of the Belgian penalty area and appeared to have eluded everyone, only for England’s number 17 to perform a quite astonishing 180 degree spin and volley the ball past Michel Preud’homme, sending England into the quarter finals of the World Cup.
On Wednesday 27th June 1990, every single boy in England aged between eight and eighteen tried to recreate that goal and even in the unlikely event of any of them being successful, they weren’t the first to do it; David Platt was and he always will be.
I once heard Kraftwerk described as “techno band zero.” They were the first, the originators, the pioneers, the ones who built the forge from which almost all electronic music has been created and though subsequent practitioners have walked and weaved and changed and developed the medium in ways Ralf and Florian could not possibly have imagined, the fire from that forge glows as brightly now as it ever did.
Unfortunately, Majeure and Skant, two prog/krautrock collectives from Germany feel the influence of Kraftwerk stronger than most, so strong in fact that the opening few minutes of the first song on this split EP sound so similar to “Europe, Endless” that whoever it is who handles Ralf and Florian’s legal affairs would be well advised to keep their mobile phone switched on, even if they’re in the theatre watching a play starring Richard Griffiths.
Perhaps this blatant plagiarism would be slightly easier to swallow if the press release which accompanied this release didn’t mention the very band which they’ve nicked from. Incredible. At least try and hide the fact that you don’t have any ideas of your own. It mentions Can too and Vangelis’ music from Bladerunner, which is what all the stuff which doesn’t sound like Kraftwerk, sounds like. Amazing. It’s like me going into the Courtauld Gallery, stealing Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and then getting myself interviewed on the BBC news saying “look at this brilliant painting what I done myself and definitely didn’t nick off no one.”
But maybe I should shut up. Maybe if I knew anything at all about electronic music I would know that the progressions made from one step to the next are made in the tiniest of increments and anyway eskimos have fourteen different words for snow. But in the end, no matter which way you slice it, all you are is a bunch of kids, down the park with a football trying to copy David Platt and no matter how hard you try, you’ll never do it as well as he did it.