Confused Spice

By the time of Spice Crackers' 1995 release, Camouflage found themselves dealing not only with changing times on the part of their key inspirations – Depeche Mode having long since grappled with rock motifs on albums like Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion – but with the shift from electronic pop being pop, to being a quieter concern amid the aboveground explosion of techno in Europe throughout that decade. Spice Crackers feels like a reaction to both changes in many ways, a chance for Camouflage to find their own identity as well as see how to roll with the times – and what's striking is how they predated some future developments elsewhere as a result. (It says something that the bass-heavy introduction "X-Ray" might have appeared on Depeche's Ultra, for instance, even though that album was two years away from release at that point.) There's a self-referentiality to the field that's almost amusing in its apparent po-facedness – calling one song "Kraft" and the one immediately after it "Electronic Music" is almost too much – but the exquisite instrumental "Ronda's Trigger," arguably the album's best song, celebrates things more effectively, a classic electronic dance number in the best way, propulsive and serene at the same time.