Written by: Dave Cantrell
Yes, we’re a fickle lot, us fans, but we also tend to be, due the joy whatever band or artist provided our hungry souls sustenance in the first place, patient to the proverbial fault, ever-forgiving of long absences so long as what arrives past those tears-filled lacunae succeeds at reviving that still active – if a bit guttering – flame their work lighted inside us however many years ago. Which is the issue right there as they too often fall – let’s see, what’s the phrase? Oh yeah – woefully short. I’d mention examples but the experiences have been too painful to recount. Thankfully, however, as is the case before us today, there are those instances where one’s original faith and fan-worthiness is not only not dashed but revived with a fervor that, however inevitably tempered by time and its many shadows, matches that initial spark of excited delight when discovering their name attached to an album atop the new release pile that is sans the word ‘retrospective’ or even worse, that ghastly phrase ‘greatest hits.’ Thus do we welcome you, then, to the spanking new self-titled album (dropped last Friday October 11th on the wonderful Bureau B label) from pretty much the cutting-edge synth-wave (-dance? -punk?) pioneers Propaganda.
That wibbling just there regarding exactly which variant of the multitudinous synth-based sub-genres to assign them to, while, yes, to some extent a nod to both the dizzying array of such labels that have developed over the decades and, subsequently, your aging author’s disinclination to even bother engaging in that not untendious process, is more than anything an oblique commentary on the sheer mastery on display here, a sureness of hand that not only puts paid to any and all such trainspotting nonsense but does so – irony of ironies to some extent – by tossing them all in to their uniquely designed blender which, come to think of it, is a too-easy possibly lazy metaphor for the history at hand here so how about a quick(ish) Cliffs Notes backstory tracing how Propaganda arrived at Propaganda (deep breath and…go!)
Formed in Düsseldorf in 1982 by Rolf Dörper and Andreas Thein with the quick addition of symphony percussionist Michael Mertens to the mix that soon, with Theins out of the picture and vocalists Claudia Brucken and Susanne Freytag in, dropped the stunner debut LP A Secret Wish in ’83 on the legendary ZTT label (click here and here for audio/video confirmation of that record’s utter coolness), then a contract-escaping hiatus before 1990’s 1234 made by a slightly different grouping of personnel and including guest spots from David Gilmour and Howard Jones past which not so much a dissolution as a dual diversification, Dörper resuscitating Die Krupps while Mertens veered off toward film and television work not to mention founding his own label (Amontillado, which centered on Düsseldorf-based experimental electronic artists) which is to say the pair kept themselves busy for the next thirty-odd years when Frankie alumnus Holly Johnson lured them back behind the controls in 2015 with a mix request and the force that is Propaganda, now with a seasoned remit, were reborn with an energy that, as presented by the evidence provided us today, seems a blend of their long experience newly condensed into a kind of concise explosion of hooks and melody and mystique all wrapped inside an overall aesthetic that could well serve as a creative roadmap of the mid-2020s. Examples? Yeah, we’ve got a few.
“They Call Me Nocebo” despite its title’s namesake, launches well past any possible ‘negative expectations’ via a robo-funk intro that morphs itself into an instantly addictive, languorous and alluring slice of modern soul that, besides featuring – as is the case throughout – both the sly assistance of the legendary Hauschka as well the enveloping vocals of Thunder Bae, not only unwinds some slinky Frippian guitar work but could also define a sub-genre called ‘hopeful apocalyptica’ if it indeed existed which perhaps it now does. Immediately past it, keeping that almost narcotic vibe alive, “Purveyor of Pleasure” has us bumping hypnotically about the office as if we’ve turned it into some (possibly illicit) after-hours dance club in the coolest corner of darkest Berlin and so it goes trippily down the tracklist, unique and curious treasure after unique and curious treasure.
The subtly Kraftwerkian “Tipping Point” should immediately be declared the official soundtrack to every damn drive down the autobahn from this day forward, smoothly carroming as it does from lane to lane like some ecstatic motorbot just repurposed into human form this morning. “Love:Craft,” meanwhile, in its strings, its percussion, its emphaticness and yearning, is, yes, futuristic but is also grounded in a haunted immediacy that lands it midway between Daft Punk and Curtis Mayfield before “Dystopian Waltz” follows an electronic insect buzz into some deep shadows that pull one irresistibly into a nightscape that manages to shift the definition of ‘foreboding’ into the clutches of some siren slyly rewriting the dictionaries of both sound and meaning and, as you might well guess, it is in fact epic if in pretty much the most natural way imaginable and there’s our story right there.
Few now – and, well, ever really – track the inner pulse of the human soul, its desires and fears and its reaches for hope however evanescent, in such a sublimely insinuous/implicative way as Dörper Martens Hauschka and Bae have succeeded in doing here. Immersive and immediate, it’s a fucking joy to have them back and as loaded as the phrase might be in our current climate, too bad: Long live Propaganda. [pick up your Propaganda here]
