D.a.f.

This DAF overview from Mute's Grey Area pulls from Alles Ist Gut, Gold und Liebe, and Für Immer, the three Conny Planck-produced albums Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado released on Virgin during 1981 and 1982. It's even-handed in its selections, with six tracks off Gold und Liebe and seven each from the other two. Virtually all the highlights are here, and almost all of them dish out the impossibly clenched, bruising rhythms and barked vocals DAF perfected during this phase. The slower, sleazier, and even more sinister material ("Im Dschungel der Liebe," "Prinzessin") is also well represented. Naturally, this is the best dose of early electronic body music short of Mute's fine 1998 album reissues.

The well-known painting of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach reproduced on the cover of this CD must be one of the most immediately attractive composer portraits ever made. The wide-brimmed hat, the fur-lined coat, the wisp of steely hair and, above all, the reddened but unmistakably genial face (displaying, if I’m not mistaken, his father’s nose) suggest a man one would want to accompany straightaway to the nearest coffee-house. But Friedemann was actually a little more complex than that, both as a person who could be lazy and argumentative and as a talented musician torn between the styles of the late baroque and early classical periods, so it is perhaps no surprise to find that there is considerable variety in the music on this disc.

German musician Frank Dorittke, aka F.D. Project, is originally a guitarist from the Dinslaken-based band Imagine. He got interested in electronic music around 1991, and became influenced by the music of Tangerine Dream. The versatile and accessible music of F.D. Project is not that simply to depict as it’s influences range from Tangerine Dream to Mike Oldfield, at other occasions keenly blending elements from the Berlin School and guitar riffs. At times it can be melodic and up-tempo, then switching to captivating atmospheric textures and soundscapes.