Cargo Records

Dieter Moebius – Ding

If we wanted to explain to an alien what pop music is all about, then some rough categories would certainly be helpful. Perhaps the first thing to occur to us would be the time-honored differentiation between a "song" and a "track". A song consists of different structural elements (verses, chorus), while a track contains recurring units. Consequently, a track is more simply constructed than a song - whose distinguishing characteristics are the integral drama of an exciting verse and a redemptive chorus. The additional value the track gains from its repetitive nature is another. It's a value of felt eternity, an idea of transcendency, an echo of archaic rites. Meanwhile, of course, the production of repetitive music has been refined to such an extent that the uniformity of the material doesn't seem as such. But there are still - or perhaps now again - producers who don't mask the main feature of a loop with constant variation. Dieter Moebius is one such producer. His tracks are really and truly linearly constructed. Therefore it hardly matters how tightly packed the events within one of his tracks may be. And the level of tightly packed events on "Ding“ is very high indeed.

The first track, "Walksol", already surprises us with rhythms moving in opposite directions of one another and beats which are both shuffling and forceful.Arabesque elements blow in, going at it, rough and rumbling. On the whole, "Ding" is surprisingly gripping and direct compared to the friendly miniatures of its predecessor, "Kram".  Moebius, the krautrock pioneer, has rediscovered dirt and patina for himself. Shuffled grooves and spooky sounds. There's "Flink", with its nervous pulse. Or the beat-free "Alfred", with the sound of a sonar. The collage-like "Zufall" or "Bone", with its cold EBM sounds. Abstract electronica on "Fou" and "Ruston&Monotron".

However versatile the music of Dieter Moebius may be, it always bears his signature.The superimposed layers which which rub against each other during the moment of their simultanity. Then, the track seems to hover, as if suspended in a vacuum. An imperceptible process of a replacement takes place. Suddenly, we find ourselves listening to entirely different music. Because, with each layer, Moebius opens the door to a new world of sound, which often shows completely different characteristics than the sound environment he's just maneuvered us out of. Despite all of this diversity in sound, Dieter Moebius' concept of dramaturgy is linearity.One event follows another. This absence of escalations, this stoicism, make up the clarity and hypnotic power of Moebius' music.Beat by beat, this music strives for endlessness. It drags us into each track and unfolds its magic from the very first moment on. Dieter Mobeius has been making music for more than forty years. His status as a pioneer is indisputable. Together with Hans-Joachim Roedelius, he formed the duo Cluster.