The new album by the Düsseldorf-Cologne-Berlin-based band Kreidler plays with the idea that it can be enlightening to stand above time. Kreidler combine the 20th and 22nd centuries in a kind of retro-futurism. Their science fiction combines the basic ideas of cybernetics, that is, the science of communication and control of living organisms and machines, with Godard's feature film Alphaville - which was filmed in Paris Orly, through whose glass labyrinth, manifesting the future, one still moves today when landing in Paris as an easy-jetsetter.

Question: Mosaic in the sense of Labyrinth? Andreas Reihse from Kreidler: Exactly. We could have also called the album Labyrinth 2014. The important thing was that a number appeared in the title.

Like fragments of a never written book, the song titles on Mosaic 2014 are arranged one after another:

Mosaik, Zero, Marauder, Brass Cannon, High Wichita, European Grey, Doom Boys, Impressions d'Afrique, Luminous Procuress.  

The titles fill the void that pure instrumental music leaves on a lyrical level. Impressions d'Afrique is the name of the eighth piece. A novel by the French writer Raymond Roussel also had this name.

Roussel's work is based on a writing technique he developed himself, based on wordplay and sound associations. He explained this technique in his book published in 1935 How I Wrote Some of My Books; it made Roussel a pioneer of surrealism. Kreidler's way of storytelling also has a method, only they do it completely without words. Kreidler tell their story in nine different versions (= tracks). Kreidler's music is electronic. It is rhythmic, often tribal-percussive. It is informed by the band's stage concept.

As a reminder: There are few bands where no concert is like the other. In this sense, Kreidler move in the tradition of the great improvisers, not those who played free jazz, thus aiming for total freedom, but those who moved freely oscillating in the corridor of versions. Glances are exchanged on stage, a nod of the head, then another picks up the beam of light hanging in the air and draws a bassline underneath, as if it were cake batter that still needs a pinch of cardamom stirred in. Kreidler are the antithesis of the much-quoted saying that too many cooks spoil the broth.

When Kreidler recorded Mosaik 2014 in March 2008 in Rosemarie Trockel's garage in Cologne, the philosopher Wilfried Dickhoff knocked on the gate one day. At that time, he had just bought Miles Davis' Complete Jack Johnson Sessions and was perplexed to hear, in the adjacent backyard, music that was identical in practice, if not in instrumentation. For a man for whom abstractions are part of everyday business, it was naturally irrelevant that Kreidler were turning the knobs of analog and digital synthesizers instead of blowing into a horn.

Another analogy is the name Kraftwerk, the other great Düsseldorfers of this planet. Kreidler use sounds that sound like Kraftwerk. Like madeleines, they are dabblers of memories. Unlike Kraftwerk, where a melody always shaped an entire album, there are countless melodies in Kreidler that layer over each other. And yet Kraftwerk is naturally the role model, because they stand for a European pop music that is based on different premises than Anglo-American music. With the difference that here people make music - and not robots. Kreidler say: This is the record to put on before going out; the record to get you euphoric in anticipation of things to come. Anyone who still says now that contemporary music has missed the boat has missed it themselves.

Credits:
Text: Max Dax
Image: Thea Djordjadze

Originally published in SPEX issue #09/10, 2009