DORAU, ANDREAS - Arger mit der Unsterblichkeit

In 1988, in a club in Munich, German pop legend Andreas Dorau heard a kind of music which was completely new to him. He remembers it like this: While we were producing Demokratie, acid house kicked off. It hit me right between the eyes. It was the most incredible thing for me!" Things really took off shortly afterwards, when somebody in England came up with the notion of looping and editing recorded music by other bands. Dorau: "You could pick out your favorite passages from a song, choose the best of the 50s, 60s and 70s and build more or less the perfect song." Endless possibilities! Production techniques were also advancing apace. In 1991 a sampler capable of sampling two minutes cost around 300 Deutsche Marks. Just a few years earlier, such a device would have set the buyer back 10,000 Marks. And so Ärger mit der Unsterblichkeit (Trouble with Immortality) was fashioned in the living room of Doraus new musical companion, his congenial partner Tommi Eckardt. Eckardt played in a band by the name of Die alternativen Arschlöcher (trans. "The Alternative Assholes") and would later find international fame as one-half of the pop duo 2raumwohnung. A new era, a wonderful time. Dorau: "Our rave rigmarole left live audiences nonplussed. Once the album was released, I was seen as some kind of sick character." Others have been tarred with the same brush, have they not? Often, all too often, the best. Includes two bonus tracks." - Bureau B