It got frustrating, nay, tiring, attempting to write any review whatsoever of Ellen Allien and Apparat’s amazing Orchestra Of Bubbles album last year-it seemed that the rock kids were climbing out of the woodworked rafters to heap praise upon “techno electronica”, or whatever name they deemed fitting at the moment that didn’t involve invoking Warp records, the word “grime” or the phrase “IDM”. The warm, melodic, vocal-heavy sound that Ellen has, via her Bpitch Control label, been creating, crafting and releasing, is a huge contradiction to what the Blood Brothers-and-vegan-tattoos beard-rock set had been conjuring in their heads as “rave-worthy electronic music”. As soon as they discovered last year’s Bubbles, Ellen’s collaboration with former beau and Shitkatapult honcho Sascha “Apparat” Ring, and one of the top 10 albums of 2006, as a highly listenable piece of work, suddenly everyone, from the dude at the Starbucks to plumber Bob, wants a piece of the Allien.

To reiterate and simplify, it became frustrating to, in a sense, lose the mystery and the magic of Ellen to the grabbing hands grabbing all they could (all for themselves, after all)-many of these were the verysame electronic nay-sayers who claimed the music had no life, had no breath, had no heart and soul. These rock kids jumping wholesale on the “tech train” were the ones who, as I’ve been quoted as saying in far too many drunken bitch (or is it bpitch?) fits now, claim their favorite song is “Daft Punk Is Playing At My House” but wouldn’t know if Daft Punk WAS playing at their house (and wouldn’t dance if Bangalter was there or not). Bpitch Control is the label that, a half-decade or more ago, brought me back to dance music when I wanted to abandon what had become a Tiesto-and-tapas genre. As such, it came hard, the ever-ubiquitous nature of the VeganForkGum Ellen Allien “we dunno what this is, but we know we may possibly like it we think” update in the music realm, having listened to and loved the cold, starkness of “Stadtkind” in a way that was near-lifesaving, and having had the transcendant moments of Ellen’s breakthrough “Berlinette” cascade into that split-second of time-stop that happened the first time I heard the end of Ellen’s remix of Covenant’s “Bullet”, when, after all bass and mids are cut, she slams 110% back into the song and orchestrates a death-defyin, heart-stopping climax and rides the song to the end. For a moment last year, I was even waiting for CocaineBlunts to start keeping track of every time she drank a beer. Thankfully for my soul, that didn’t happen.

Also thankfully for my soul, my need to escape being, at my base, an electronic music journalist (in a rock world that had suddenly decided to do a 180 spin and embrace anything that sounded like what I’d listened to at 16) wasn’t a detraction from the effect Orchestra Of Bubbles had on me; if anything, I took my love for Ellen underground. She’s only been booked in Atlanta once, on the ill-fated tour that found her trapped at the Canadian border of the U.S., unable to enter due to Bush regulations (I think he just had an extreme fear of her last name-he had just recently started watching the X-Files at the time), and so not getting to experience the BPC sound in a live environment left me with nothing but her sound, the last few notes of “Bubbles”, her voice “like an echo in the woods”, in my headphones.

However, as I tune myself back in to the mechanorganic machine of hype that is the daily music blog grind, I’m finding a lack of anyone talking about Ellen’s recent projects, or what she’s doing with Bpitch Control. She’s slipped off the hype-dar, and thus irrevelant.

Fuck that. It’s time to turn this over to someone with an emotion invested in this stuff, with a love for the sound.

Consider this my own personal coming-from-a-place-of-adoration Catching Up With Ellen Allien.

Bpitch IS, hands down, the greatest electronic label in existence today-it sounds immediately familiar and yet like nothing else-with a warmth and accessability lost on stuff like Traum, M_nus and other labels that fit the “German Techno” stereotype (and stereo boredom) and yet without the dumbed-down crap-for-the-kids watertripe of, say, the current output of ‘Ed Banger. Ellen never jumped on the dance rock scene-nor did she have a need, as her dance shit just flat-out rocks, and harder than anything Justice can do. (Just check the video for Trashscapes)

To show what’s been going on in her little corner of Berlin, Ellen recently did a mix for XLR8R Magazine with a handful of top-grade BPC tunes and a few exclusives.

Ellen Allien: No Snow In Berlin-A BPC label mix

(Tracklist available at XLR8R)
Even in promotional “no one’s gonna hear this, really” mix-form, Ellen gives it her all-I really adore the way “No Snow In Brooklyn” starts off in a melancholy, somber mood and slowly picks up steam, but never really leaves a grey, bleak, wintery level.

To give a visual to the sound, Ellen’s also been tapped to host the latest issue of DVD-Mag Time Out, as a guide through Berlin.

Watch for more on this when it hits the Resonator Mag office-we’re anxiously awaiting.

Late last year, Ellen teamed up with Matt Dear, under his technofuckery guise of Audion, for a split 12’. Entitled “Just A Man/Just A Woman”, each took a side to craft a track of their own and remix the other’s work.

Ellen Allien: Just A Woman

Ellen’s own “Just A Woman” is a subdued, highly intellectual piece of mood-tech, the sort of dark piece of overcast machine rattle that she perfected on Thrills.

Audion: Just A Man(Ellen Allien remix)

It’s her reworking of the Audion track that’s the standout of the entire record. Showing off those ghetto leanings that we last heard in the Chronic-esque string workings throughout her last solo album (why, oh why, can’t we get her to do an album with T.I. and therefore take up a few-month residency in the ATL?), she chops and screws Dear Matthew’s piece of floor funk into a slow-and-low cruising jam. Germans on Gin and Juice, this one is.

Also out late last year was the long-overdue album of reworkings of tracks by Paul Kalkbrenner, whose “Der Berserker” will long stand as one of the most standout tracks ever to be released on BPC.

Paul Kalkbrenner: Queer Fellow (Ellen Allien & Apparat remix)

Ellen and SaschApparat turned Kalkbrenner’s “Queer Fellow” into an reverberated echo, the sound of a stormy morning’s heavy clouds-there’s a hard and held hand on the bass here, and it makes the song all the better for it.

And, finally, the proof of the true conquering, genre-busting and wall-breaking Ellen’s sound has done. As a part of the re-release of Beck’s “The Information”, Ellen’s been tapped to remix “Cellphone’s Dead”.

Beck: Cellphone’s Dead (Ellen Allien remix)

Full disclosure: I know it’s completely taboo to participate in the music industry circus and not lavish praise on every single move Beck makes, but I don’t- for the simple reason that I feel he just makes too many. I barely had time to get over “Midnight Vultures” when I had to pay attention to “Sea Change” and was caught unawares with “Guero”, and so I didn’t hear a single thing from “The Information”.

With that being said, four words on Ellen’s Beck re-rub:

This. Is. Just. Awesome.

Gorgeous, lush, a bit hallucinogenic, with a droning bassline that has a hypnotic pull down and under. There’s the bare minimum use of Beck’s voice, but what is there is used to perfection, and the few breaks of hollow, tinny snare behind him add a feel of emptiness, loss and confusion.

If I had to pinpoint, to press a label to, to define, Ellen’s true genius, the reason why her stuff from Braincandy sounds so utterly, astoundingly different from anything on Orchestra Of Bubbles, and yet has strinkingly common threads, it would be this imbuing of Rock songwriting emotive aesthetic with a powerful, ass-and-heart shaking electronic wizardry (not to mention a sheen of cool). She did it on the “Bullet” remix, she does it with her own stuff, she did it on the tour with Apparat, and she’s doing it again here-bringing the rockers and the ravers together.

In a way, it’s a true testament to my music snobbery and elitism-my inability to be glad the kids who like the Foo Fighters are now listening to German Techno. At the same time, though, Ellen’s been sowing the seeds of a common ground since the very beginng-her early 12” “Breakfast On Rocks” goes from a low-end tonepoem to a flat-out Metal jam depending upon the speed at which it’s played, and she’s always carried herself with an air of (cult of) personality shirked by other dance producers. It’s as much her music as her persona that makes her so damn addictive.

The sheer amount of work she’s done, tracks she’s given the magic breath of life to, makes it vital, exciting, and not a little daunting to keep on top of her sound-a sound that keeps ringing as achingly, impossibly fresh and amazingly powerful, and a sound that continues to be the textbook definition of what IS good electronic music. To ignore even a breath from Ellen is a mistake.