Teutonic Training

08 Saturday, July 20, 2013 www.thenational.ae The National thereview The National thereview Saturday, July 20, 2013 www.thenational.ae 09 this week’s essential reading ’When Hollywood Held Hands With ’Evidence shows that Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party exercised considerable influence { Hitler’ by Alexander C Kafka, over Hollywood, including what films went unmade and what scenes were cut’ music { The Chronicle of Higher Education playlist Albums that became favourites with runners, cyclists and gym enthusiasts LCD Soundsystem Teutonic 45:33 This classic jogging jam works in any context, in motion or sitting still, but there’s no overstating how helpful it can be when a run starts to drag. Get lost in the beat, forget that you are spent, and find the fin- training ish line in due course. Forty years ago, long before the fall Does this new album contain music originally Kraftwerk of the Berlin Wall ushered in what certain commentators would call created to help Cold War-era athletes train, Tour de France “the end of history” (more on that or is this a marketing gimmick? It might not Soundtracks later), a fan of spaced-out cosmic music in East Germany got an unu- matter, writes Andy Battaglia, because the The robot heroes in sual chance to make his communist tunes, some of them 45 minutes long, are Kraftwerk revisited and part of the world a better, or at least reworked their classic fitter, place. His idea, bandied about perfect for brisk runs and serious cycling single Tour de France into in the early 1970s with colleagues at extended form for a 2003 a sound studio in Dresden, was to album made in mind of make music to help train athletes ponents of other stuff put to work the French bicycle race’s for the East German Olympic team. overhead. Guitar played in gallop- “The music would be hypnotic,” he ing fashion, bass that is insistent 100th anniversary. Circular said. “It would bring focus.” on keeping its concentration, lots grooves and pumping ac- So intriguing was his idea that he and lots of synthesiser – such are the tion abounds. was whisked away in a mysterious elements employed on Kosmischer car and interrogated at an athletics Läufer to make people run. camp outside Berlin, where state The fourth track, Tonband Lauf- officials charged with making East spur (Tape Running Track), interest- German Olympians more impos- ingly introduces a breakbeat that Olivia Newton-John ing on the world stage were eager to eases up the mind-erasing glide of hear about any new prospects to in- everything that came before. It still Physical crease efficiency and effectiveness moves at a swift pace, but the un- in sport. Would metronomic music, steadiness of it makes you think. In 1981, the previously with the right rate of rhythm and a Kosmischer Läufer Volume Then comes a burst of guitar that squeaky clean Grease capacity to send training athletes 1: The Secret Cosmic Music drops into a chugging drone, much star’s smash-hit single into trance states, help in the cause? of the East German Olympic like the sound of stated English ko- Physical sported a video Maybe, maybe not. Program 1972-83 smiche aficionados, Stereolab. The that made it a classic of Sounds were imagined and re- Martin Zeichnete, composer guitar is crisp and clear, round and An athlete from the former German Democratic Republic competes in the Olympic Games in 1972. Record label the exercise-music arts – corded in a studio on tape, with a Unknown Capability Recordings expansive and many-splendoured executives claim a new album containing electronic music was made specifically for East German athletes to train and excel at The Games held that year in Munich, Germany. AP Photo even if the kind of exercise mind towards the kind of so-called Dh44 in the way it was recorded. It brings maintained in a gym is not “kosmische” music popular in Ger- the energy level up again. many at the time. It was the era of But wait – wasn’t this recorded in where its emphasis lies. Kraftwerk, Neu!, Cluster, and count- run”, with a brief opening passage 1972? How come other records from McFadyen, of the label Unknown So what does it say about the state isation of western liberal democ- way: it remains a great soundtrack was put to song in the early 1980s less other cosmic groups who con- for warm-up, an extended middle the period sound so distant and dry Capability Recordings, wrote: “Glad of music that reimagining the past racy as the final form of human with which to run. In that, it actu- in Tour de France, complete with joined the otherworldly wildness of fit for a healthy jog, and a short tail by comparison? And wait, now that you’re enjoying the music. You are would seem to be more appealing government”.) ally does slot in with real historical heavy breathing by a biker seem- electronic sounds with a Teutonic at the end paced to wind it all down. we’re taking pause to think – is it free to think this release is real, fake, these days than projecting into Such an idea is easy to disregard artefacts. One, just six years old, is ing to exert himself as the song sense of rigour and order. Machines The ambient opening track, Zeit really possible that a story so grand art, or nonsense, but it certainly isn’t the future? Wasn’t electronic mu- as overly sweeping or hubristic in 45:33 by LCD Soundsystem, which rolls along, and group member Various artists figured prominently in the mix, and Zum Laufen (Time to Run), intro- could have gone unknown and un- a hoax.” sic meant to be in the progressive its sense of scale, but what if, in the crafted a masterful extended-track Ralf Hutter has been said to have, what is an athlete if not a ritualistic duces a sense of celestial weight- chronicled for more than 40 years? We’ve been down this road before, wing of things, the soundtrack with simplest terms, some sort of “end electronic disco suite that plays earlier in his career, cycled up to The Sounds of the Office and regimented sort of machine? lessness before Sandtrommel (Sand The answer, for better or worse, and recently. In just the past two which to aid and amplify the thrill- of history” in music is nigh? With around with the notion of mess- 200km a day. “Cycling,” he told an It’s hard to know how much the Drum) brings in a metronomic beat. is probably not. Prior to the Kos- years, the realm of electronic music ing (if also sometimes unnerving) the future contracting out in front ing with a runner’s head. (“Shame interviewer in 2009, “is like music. The opposite of exercise, music made for training factored And what a beat – shaking from side mischer Läufer release, it seems, has greeted the invented memories sense of future-shock all around us? and the past so fully mined that fic- on you,” it coyly whispers near the It is always forward.” a day in an office can be into Olympic success at the time, to side while pushing forcefully for- mentions of the ostensible creator, of Jürgen Müller, an alleged marine When the Berlin Wall came down tional history now has to stand in start, just when the jogger’s sense Was he correct? Is music, then, numbing but aurally re- but its remnants can be heard on a ward, it sounds somehow sympa- Martin “Z” Zeichnete, in the omnip- biologist-turned-hobbyist ambient- in 1989, the political commenta- for the real thing, is a sense of fated of accomplishment begins to bal- like cycling? Does it always move warding too, as exhibited new collection called Kosmischer thetic to the hesitance that besets otent archive of everything online, music composer, and Ursula Bogn- tor Francis Fukuyama proposed a stasis upon us? Does envisioning loon.) Questions relating to its forward – progress, mutate, trans- on this endearingly strange Läufer Volume 1: The Secret Cosmic the beginning of a run – the sense amount to precisely zero. There’s er, a departed German woman said new notion of “the end of history”. such a state represent newfound genuine investment in running form – or does it sometimes pull up record from 1964. Sample Music of the East German Olympic that a lot of energy is about to be ex- no mention of the programme or to have made a private stash of great It had nothing to do with the state freedom from hyperawareness of were answered by its having been and spin its wheels? song titles tell it all: Letter Program 1972-83. The first part pended. And to what end? anything else like it, either. In an- electronic recordings for herself in of contemporary music, of course, the past, or is it more a failure of im- commissioned, presumably to sell Opening, Manual Type- of the title translates as “cosmic It’s here that the exhilarating “mo- swer to an email sending early word the 1960s. Neither proved to be veri- but it did suppose to be able to iden- agination? shoes, by Nike. Andy Battaglia is a New York- runner”, and, indeed, the sounds torik” sound of Germany at the time of praise and asking whether the fiably real, but the sounds credited tify “the end point of mankind’s Many questions spring to mind, Before that, from a slightly dif- based writer whose work appears writer, Postage Meter and assembled were strategically con- takes hold, with drums that fall into Kosmischer Läufer music is really to them garnered much in the way ideological evolution”.

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