MALARIA! - Compiled 1981-1984

Repressed; 2001 year release which compiles 16 tracks from all their early releases, originally released 1981-84. Malaria were an all-female art-wave group from Berlin, with connections to Die Haut, Einsturzende, Nina Hagen, Static, etc. A seminal early 80s document. Contagious diseases, uncertain modes of transmission: Malaria evolved from Mania D., a trio that had already gained a following even without music through their style and artwork. When they expanded into a quintet, they not only retained the first two letters, recurring in medieval, mask, magister artium and mama, they also kept a world of signifiers: heat, illness, fever, ill-defined states. At the time, the beat and the saxophone, which signalled the continuity of both bands, could only be comprehended through inevitable misunderstandings and other contemporary beats and sounds. And -- like an italicised letter -- they incarnated the promise contained in the title: elusive funk, undeveloped jazz, an unresolved and strained insistence on a difference for which no words existed at the time, and certainly no music that one could put a name to." -Diedrich Diederichsen