NDW - Populare Mechanik

I know nothing about Populare Mechanik at all. I bought this 1981 single and, as far as I can tell, it was their only vinyl release. There were two cassette albums, and apparently this year Holger Hiller curated a compilation album, comprising tracks from those releases. And that's it.

So not a wildly successful band, then. But they were fantastic: mostly instrumental, with elements of dub, funk and free jazz. Happily, there's not much jazz on this track 'Schnarfer Schnitt (No. 1)'.

And that concludes my journey this week through the Neue Deutsche Welle. To recap, we had: Fehlfarben, Grauzone, P1/E, Palais Schaumburg, der Plan and the Wirtschaftswunder.

I still think it was a fascinating, creative movement. And I still love it. I think I'll return to it in the near future.

NDW - Palais Schaumburg

Now we come to the famous stuff. Palais Schaumburg were a Hamburg group who released three albums in the early 1980s and attracted some critical acclaim even in Britain. Their eponymous debut album in 1981 was co-produced by David Cunningham, which helped attract attention, as did the fact that one of the founder-members was Holger Hiller (though I think he'd left by this stage).

Anyway this is 'Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt', the first track from that album, also released as a single, and it's a fine piece of twisted white funk.

The group's name, incidentally, comes from what was then the official residence of the West German chancellor - the equivalent of an American band naming themselves the White House.