Death In Vegas "Satan's Circus" (2004) [by Michael]

This album starts out unbelievably well. The first track 'Ein Fur Die Damen' gives the same giddy rush those with ears get when 'Isi' kicks off the album "Neu! 75". Those who don't know that album or its companion pieces from the 70s German electronic milieu - albums by Kraftwerk, Neu!, Cluster, Harmonia - will not be able to refernce the touch points of "Satan's Circus", but who f-ing cares? I haven't heard any of Death In Vegas' previous albums. This is electronic music. It beeps and buzzes, crackles and bubbles, and sweeps from one speaker to another. But most of this album is much colder and darker than the opening track. Four tracks in, 'Black Lead' sounds more like something from "Cluster II". That album is full of dark spaceyness; it's not thrilling and fun like 'Isi' or 'Ein Fur Die Damen', and it's not as good. "Satan's Circus", like the German electronica it's based on, is better when it's more friendly. The electronic outer space excurions into black holes are often somewhat unsatifying. The spacial depth and sonic textures on cold tracks like 'Black Lead' are cool and interesting, and I think those tracks make a better effect on their own than back to back on the album.

Most of the tracks on "Satan's Circus" are cold to some extent, even the friendlier ones. There's no attempt to make the music more organic sounding. There are little to no inputs from, or samples of, 'regular' instruments. It makes no attempt to mediate or vitiate the nature of its electronic sound sources. Nor is it really 'danceable' - most of it not by a long shot. This is not what most people think of when they think of "electronica", even the ambient stuff. All the better. The electronics are allowed to really be their weird selves. I can tolerate the duller parts of "Satan's Circus" because of that, though they could have cut 10 or 15 minutes out of the middle of the album. The payoffs are gold money, though. I get butterflies again on the last few tracks and it closes with the charming, music-box bleeps heard in abundance on another one of those classic German records.