Track Of The Day ROLF POP
From the “aus grauer Städte Mauern” of Hamburg, the DIY label Ölband Kassetten unveiled last weekend another valuable member of its increasing “Neue Neue Deutsche Welle” famiglia, the enigmatic solo act Rolf Pop delivers jittery minimal synth electronic pop music laced, like most of his team-mates, with a tripped-out quality, on the somehow dirty and warm notes of vintage analogue synthesizers, in this case, a Farfisa fast 3 combo organ (1968) of Ray Manzarek’s bygone memories and the Roland Jupiter-8 (1981) largely used in the Minimal-Wave/Synth-Pop heydays.
The claustrophobic and hallucinogenic, “Blitz Mich /Flash Me”, lyrically about moving too fast, bounces on the urgent race of a metronomic drum programming woven with neurotic burbling bass loops, relentlessly punctuating alienating droning synth oscillations, stained by icy desolate space-out motifs, to flash obsessively around angsty atmospheric spoken word vocals, injecting restless dread into an oppressive eddy of dead-end paranoia.