I vacillate, especially publicly, in my appreciation for the Immer-ization of schaffel that took over the more MNML-minded clubs for one dark minute earlier this decade. The Berlin version of a spaghetti western soundtrack, schaffel/shuffle-tech has the ability, like most progressive offshoots of House, to be either hypnotic or the inspiration for eye-gouging in its’ repetition. Some, like our beloved lil’ guy Superpitcher, used a unique approach to vocals and composition to turn plodding into a new goth romantique movement.

 I’ve belabored how schaffel, like spandex, is a right-not-a-privilege. So I was a bit fearful, a bit off-put, and more than a tiny bit curious when one of the quiet, back-room forerunners in the surge of amazing electronic music in the past few years, namely old MALARIA! no-punk’er Gudrun Gut, head of Monika Records (one of those labels touched by the hand of any-and-everything able to keep record labels from ever producing anything less than good, usually bordering on tell-everyone-this-is-greatness), announced plans to break her composition silence for a full-length album on her own this year. The little leaks and trickles that slowly made their way to me sounded like someone who’d spent a lot of time with headphones on, obsessing over what made “Love is Stronger Than Pride” so jaw-droppingly anthemic and yet understated (without ever venturing into cheese-anthem hoovers-n-horns).

However, let’s restate: shuffle-tech can be tear-numbling stab-me-with-a-rave boring.

Â
Fortunately, Gut’s I Put A Record On, as an album, skips and stammers but holds together with a dark, dubby ambience. It’s not a car album by any means, but the best stuff coming from Camp Reenvigorate Tech in the past few years has been more meant for the sort of DIY headphone parties that can be held with ample bedroom floor space. Yeah, I’ve been…delayed…in writing about it, but how do you discuss something that uses understatement to establish itself?

(also: busy)

 Gudrun Gut: Move MeÂ

The album’s opener and first single, “Move Me”, has existed in various forms long before I Put A Record On was complete. With this version, we get Gudrun’s take on a Tech-Waltz, the romance of the future (or current), an almost-polka marrying with familiar shuffling progression into a track that shouldn’t work, by any means. There’s no way that if, as some claim, this entire thing was plotted out on paper it could ever make it past partial conception. Resonating in the ears, “Move Me’ is a unique, spoken-patter love-skip that lives and breathes what wine-drunk sounds like, with Gudrun’s soft, plain-stated statement “I fall to pieces/like a Patsy Cline song/I fall to…” before drifting off and coming back with “…little pieces”. It doesn’t get better, or more creative, than this.

Gudrun Gut: Rock Bottom RiserÂ

Let me make something clear: I fucking hate Smog, Jandek, and all of those “so-mysterious-ooh-I’ma-strummin-strummer-listen-to-me-strum” sorts of hyper-mysterious, “I ain’t gots no image and that’s my image” singer-songwriter-moonshine distiller bear-killers who go to the woods to make a guitar out of twigs (deliberately).  As such, prior to this, I’d never heard Smogy-mc-flannel-shirt’s original version of “Rock Bottom Riser”.
I now have. It doesn’t come close to the euphoria, the tongue-in-cheek rescue-and-remedy that neither resolves itself nor catharsizes anything, of Gut’s remake.
Smog? Boring. This? Beautiful.

The whole of I Put A Record On is like that, though-unexpectedly beautiful in the echo-chamber, in the head and in the heart. Dance music for kids who want to feel, want a click, a clack, and a heartfelt resonance-not to mention originality. You’ll hear nothing like this record, the one that Gudrun’s putting on, for quite some time.

 Monika Records/Gudrun Gut online (you can and should buy albums there, too)

I vacillate, especially publicly, in my appreciation for the Immer-ization of schaffel that took over the more MNML-minded clubs for one dark minute earlier this decade. The Berlin version of a spaghetti western soundtrack, schaffel/shuffle-tech has the ability, like most progressive offshoots of House, to be either hypnotic or the inspiration for eye-gouging in its’ repetition. Some, like our beloved lil’ guy Superpitcher, used a unique approach to vocals and composition to turn plodding into a new goth romantique movement.

 I’ve belabored how schaffel, like spandex, is a right-not-a-privilege. So I was a bit fearful, a bit off-put, and more than a tiny bit curious when one of the quiet, back-room forerunners in the surge of amazing electronic music in the past few years, namely old MALARIA! no-punk’er Gudrun Gut, head of Monika Records (one of those labels touched by the hand of any-and-everything able to keep record labels from ever producing anything less than good, usually bordering on tell-everyone-this-is-greatness), announced plans to break her composition silence for a full-length album on her own this year. The little leaks and trickles that slowly made their way to me sounded like someone who’d spent a lot of time with headphones on, obsessing over what made “Love is Stronger Than Pride” so jaw-droppingly anthemic and yet understated (without ever venturing into cheese-anthem hoovers-n-horns).

However, let’s restate: shuffle-tech can be tear-numbling stab-me-with-a-rave boring.

Â
Fortunately, Gut’s I Put A Record On, as an album, skips and stammers but holds together with a dark, dubby ambience. It’s not a car album by any means, but the best stuff coming from Camp Reenvigorate Tech in the past few years has been more meant for the sort of DIY headphone parties that can be held with ample bedroom floor space. Yeah, I’ve been…delayed…in writing about it, but how do you discuss something that uses understatement to establish itself?

(also: busy)

 Gudrun Gut: Move MeÂ

The album’s opener and first single, “Move Me”, has existed in various forms long before I Put A Record On was complete. With this version, we get Gudrun’s take on a Tech-Waltz, the romance of the future (or current), an almost-polka marrying with familiar shuffling progression into a track that shouldn’t work, by any means. There’s no way that if, as some claim, this entire thing was plotted out on paper it could ever make it past partial conception. Resonating in the ears, “Move Me’ is a unique, spoken-patter love-skip that lives and breathes what wine-drunk sounds like, with Gudrun’s soft, plain-stated statement “I fall to pieces/like a Patsy Cline song/I fall to…” before drifting off and coming back with “…little pieces”. It doesn’t get better, or more creative, than this.

Gudrun Gut: Rock Bottom RiserÂ

Let me make something clear: I fucking hate Smog, Jandek, and all of those “so-mysterious-ooh-I’ma-strummin-strummer-listen-to-me-strum” sorts of hyper-mysterious, “I ain’t gots no image and that’s my image” singer-songwriter-moonshine distiller bear-killers who go to the woods to make a guitar out of twigs (deliberately).  As such, prior to this, I’d never heard Smogy-mc-flannel-shirt’s original version of “Rock Bottom Riser”.
I now have. It doesn’t come close to the euphoria, the tongue-in-cheek rescue-and-remedy that neither resolves itself nor catharsizes anything, of Gut’s remake.
Smog? Boring. This? Beautiful.

The whole of I Put A Record On is like that, though-unexpectedly beautiful in the echo-chamber, in the head and in the heart. Dance music for kids who want to feel, want a click, a clack, and a heartfelt resonance-not to mention originality. You’ll hear nothing like this record, the one that Gudrun’s putting on, for quite some time.

 Monika Records/Gudrun Gut online (you can and should buy albums there, too)