Gudrun Gut: Wildlife
Posted by Vito Camarretta (@)
Oct 22 2012
Artist: Gudrun Gut (@)
Title: Wildlife
Format: CD
Label: Monika Enterprise (@)
Rated: *****
Former member of the primordial Einsturzede Neubaten line up, founder of the seminal female band Malaria!, milestone of German post-punk scene, label manager of the appreciated Monika Enterprises, whose musicians have often been a finishing line whenever reviewers used to speak about the so-called forlktronica, club promoter, voice and selector of the weekly radio show Oceanclub together with Thomas Fehlmann, Gudrun Gut has been justifiably considered one of the so pioneering key figure of Berlin scene that she could be likened to an historical monument of that huge creative smithy. That’s why the fact she decided to move out of Berlin – she entirely recorded “Wildlife” in Uckermark, a countryside town, sited not so far from German capital city – in order to get inspired for her new album and her temporary transplanting and seclusion in a rural environment could sound a little bit strange for a character who sounded so accustomed to an urban aesthetics. Although such a “coming back to nature” could be considered a return to the source – she grew up on the Lunenburg Heath – or ascribed to the general rediscovery of a natural dimension as a follow-on from the crisis of individualism, the marrow of her sound still linger on electronic structures, which oscillates between primeval new wave and industrial dance aesthetics and contemporary dub-techno, but her sonic language looks like pierced by “orgonic” and organic energies: therefore whenever her synths secretes sticky sounds (like in the dub-driven “How Can I Move” or in the darker “Tiger”), it seems she just echoes the secretion of resin as well as some percussive elements sounds like coming from tree hollows. While listening the album, you could almost feel that natural environment gradually hugging Gudrun’s sensitivity, which looks like going native in many moments of the album, such as in the blissful feeling of con/fusion and annihilation of “Little Nothing”, in the daydreaming abandon of the lovely “Slow Snow”, in the progressive detachment from social roles and scripts (as it seems to be suggested by “Erinnerung”), in the contemplative mood of the enraptured “Leaves Are Falling”, in the immersive experiencing of freedom of “Frei Sein” as well as when she looks like singing about a moment when she develops an awareness of physical human finitude by means of an eloquent and allusive revision of Bonnie Tyler’s “The Best” – the most known cover is undoubtedly the one sung by Tina Turner -, whose almost recitative interpretation could remind Romy Haag or Amanda Lear singing styles.
http://www.chaindlk.com/reviews/?id=7247