The late 90's/early 2000's were sort of a game changer for the role of synthpop in the American Goth/Industrial scene as things started to turn from the popular industrial rock from just a few years prior and many of the European synthpop bands that had been popular for years began to pop up on more DJ's playlists. One of the top albums in the lead of that charge was the 1999 debut release Motion from Germany's Endager. This is a really great album that seems heavily Depeche Mode inspired in that there are strong elements of darkwave and industrial worked into fairly straight-forward synthpop. Just a few years later there would be a slew of bands leaning more on the trance side of synthpop and so its great to look back and find something a little darker and a little edgier while still maintaining a fun quality. A lot of this can be contributed to the strong collaboration between progammer Marc Pollman and vocalist Rouven Walterowicz who both worked on the writing and producing of the album and whose individual contributions compliment one another very well. Pollman's synth-work has a really nice pace to it and while a vast majority of the time there is a dance quality that never comes across as the objective of the music but rather a bi-product. Pollman also does a great job of using the popular device of movie/television samples in a sparing but effective way as is displayed in the songs Erotic (where there's a great sample that sounds like its from a 1950's instructional film repeating the phrase "For the erotic pleasures of women") and Floating Higher which happens to use the same sample as Fictional's Your Dream from the album Fictitious which was also released in 1999. The construction of the songs are really enhanced by Walterowicz's vocals which I wouldn't say are the best vocals I've ever heard but are generally engaging in an odd sort of way. The lyrical content is surprisingly strong considering how many German bands that sing in English often fail in this department (as is pointed out by one of my favorite Gothsicles songs entitled "English License") but with Endanger there's a complexity to even simple love songs that I really appreciate and then to top things off the band gives one song in German towards the end that reminds me of Melotron (a contemporary of Endanger that first found success around the same time). I particularly love the songs Integrity and the aforementioned Erotic, both of which are great club tracks and very catchy. My favorite thing about this album is that even though it's just over a decade since its initial release there's nothing dated about it. Overall this is a really solid album and worth checking out if you missed it the first time. Favorite Tracks: Inside, Erotic, Story Of, Integrity, Silkskin, Tempture Me, and Die Quelle Meiner Kraft
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Album a Day: Endanger - Motion
The late 90's/early 2000's were sort of a game changer for the role of synthpop in the American Goth/Industrial scene as things started to turn from the popular industrial rock from just a few years prior and many of the European synthpop bands that had been popular for years began to pop up on more DJ's playlists. One of the top albums in the lead of that charge was the 1999 debut release Motion from Germany's Endager. This is a really great album that seems heavily Depeche Mode inspired in that there are strong elements of darkwave and industrial worked into fairly straight-forward synthpop. Just a few years later there would be a slew of bands leaning more on the trance side of synthpop and so its great to look back and find something a little darker and a little edgier while still maintaining a fun quality. A lot of this can be contributed to the strong collaboration between progammer Marc Pollman and vocalist Rouven Walterowicz who both worked on the writing and producing of the album and whose individual contributions compliment one another very well. Pollman's synth-work has a really nice pace to it and while a vast majority of the time there is a dance quality that never comes across as the objective of the music but rather a bi-product. Pollman also does a great job of using the popular device of movie/television samples in a sparing but effective way as is displayed in the songs Erotic (where there's a great sample that sounds like its from a 1950's instructional film repeating the phrase "For the erotic pleasures of women") and Floating Higher which happens to use the same sample as Fictional's Your Dream from the album Fictitious which was also released in 1999. The construction of the songs are really enhanced by Walterowicz's vocals which I wouldn't say are the best vocals I've ever heard but are generally engaging in an odd sort of way. The lyrical content is surprisingly strong considering how many German bands that sing in English often fail in this department (as is pointed out by one of my favorite Gothsicles songs entitled "English License") but with Endanger there's a complexity to even simple love songs that I really appreciate and then to top things off the band gives one song in German towards the end that reminds me of Melotron (a contemporary of Endanger that first found success around the same time). I particularly love the songs Integrity and the aforementioned Erotic, both of which are great club tracks and very catchy. My favorite thing about this album is that even though it's just over a decade since its initial release there's nothing dated about it. Overall this is a really solid album and worth checking out if you missed it the first time. Favorite Tracks: Inside, Erotic, Story Of, Integrity, Silkskin, Tempture Me, and Die Quelle Meiner Kraft
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