Elektric Music (Karl Bartos) - Esperanto (1993) {Atlantic} **[RE-UP]**

Esperanto is Elektric Music's debut album and is the brainchild of ex-Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos. The writing credits are shared with a number of others (more of which later) but the primary reference point for all the tracks here (with one exception) is the Kraftwerk sound, albeit updated somewhat for the nineties.

The choice of "TV" as first track is a bad one. Not that it's a bad track - far from it, the problem is that it's such a good track that little of what comes after even comes close. The song is a masterpiece, combining Bartos's understated vocals with a wonderful selection of television samples, a great melody and Electric Cafe-style percussion. This is one track that I can listen to again and again and again.

"Show Business" is co-written with Lothar Manteuffel (ex-Rheingold) who also co-wrote "TV" and Andy McCluskey of OMD. The mix of Bartos and McCluskey is an intriguing one and the end result is exactly what you'd expect - Kraftwerk meets OMD, with "Hall Of Mirrors"-esque lyrics and a pleasantly poppy tune.

"Kissing The Machine" is a Bartos/McCluskey collaboration and something of a surprise. Andy McCluskey has apparently worshipped Kraftwerk since he first saw them live in 1975, so it is rather odd that when he's at last given the chance to write a track with at least one of his heroes the end result could quite easily pass for a contemporary OMD track. There's almost no evidence of Bartos here and the song combines McCluskey's distinctive vocal style with the usual OMD choral effects. It's pretty good OMD (it's streets ahead of the current single, for example) but it seems out of place here. This should have been on the current OMD album Liberator, where it would have fitted right in.

Things gets back to normal on "Lifestyle" - an intro reminiscent of "Computer Love" leads into something that sounds like a mating of the old Kraftwerk sound and contemporary techno, with the added bonus of bucketloads of cleverly manipulated voice samples. Very effective indeed.

"Crosstalk" uses similar sample trickery but with rather less panache and also relies heavily on vocoded vocals. It's not a bad track (there isn't a genuinely bad track on this album) but it's also not the best effort here by a long shot - the lyrics in particular come over as attempting (unsuccessfully) to be trendy. The writing team of Bartos and Manteuffel is joined here by long-time Kraftwerk collaborator Emil Schult, who also designed the very Kraftwerk-like box artwork.

Next is "Information", which begins with a nice intro of ethereal strings and scattered samples but soon leads into a driving techno/Kraftwerk fusion with more of those wonderful samples and vocal cut-ups. "Esperanto" is rather different in style but no less effective. The tempo is slower and the vocals are distorted, but there's still a Kraftwerk-style melody that breaks through occasionally and the track is again liberally spiced with vocal effects. The album is finished off by the aptly named "Overdrive" - bright, energetic techno with yet more of those vocoded vocals.

All in all, I was very impressed with this album. It is definitely in my top two or three for the year so far. It's Kraftwerk updated to the nineties, and with original material too which is something we've yet to see from Kraftwerk themselves. Fans of recent Kraftwerk (ie anything from Computer World onwards) should find something in almost every track here and, even though only "TV" scales the same lofty heights that Kraftwerk reached at their peak, there's still a lot of great music on this album. Highly recommended.