Trabant - Emotional (Southern Fried)
4/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
Sometimes life can be dull, sometimes it can be tedious, sometimes it can even seem pointless, but sometimes it can be like the new album from Trabant, 'Emotional'; blisteringly fast, bizarrely surreal and magically, miraculously engaging.
There's a sense of novelty, admittedly, with an early 80s movie soundtrack feel to it... maybe this was taken off some lost b-movie about computers and nerds trying to have sex or something, having been lost in space and found by nu-wave (that's wave...) producers who've been listening to Guns n' Roses and Michael Jackson for the past 20 years. It's a challenge to describe as there's very little precedent for anything this far off the tracks of what ever else the world is doing, possibly in a magnificent way - possibly but not definitely. There's the question of whether they're being different for the sake of it, in which case this wouldn't work, but if they're truly just being themselves, with all the idiosyncrasy which that might bring, this could just be brilliant.
The clear 80s horror movie façade unites the synthesisers and Run DMC-like vocals into the corner of the dancefloor where only the filthy Rohypnol engaged people stand, starkly dancing with their eyes half open and clasping the dregs of their whisky and cokes with a sense of distain. 'I Love You Why' seems to have something of a Cure-like emotion to it, darkly surreal and bitterly seductive, like the devil trying to coax you into bed or an old man watching all the kids at the swimming baths. In parts it's complete crap, random piano fluting sporadically charging in the background while incessant sampling tries to give it a modern awareness, but at other times it's ulcerously stinging, pop even, occasionally sounding like Robbie Williams drunk, very drunk, and singing into a karaoke machine to a John Lennon b-side, or so it appears on 'Pump You Up'.
This is so hard to figure out and almost a shame to only half describe, but it's one of those albums by one of those bands you have to go out and discover for yourself, and the best we can do is push you Trabant-ways in the hope that you give their tunes a shot and see if it, in it's Cinderella glass slipper of a way, suits you. If you were to play retro computer games for weeks on end, sleeplessly, and then put together the beats and rhymes for an album, it would undoubtedly sound like this, and in the genre of retro electro funk, this is about the height of it, especially 'Galdur', a song which would be almost pointless if it wasn't so good.
In short, this is wonderfully different and completely worth a listen, especially if you're somewhat hung up on the idea of 80s romance and John Hughes films, big drums and the nerds taking over the world, an electric paradise of raging synthesisers and epic vocals. Just to be cool, this might even be in our albums of the year, only because nobody else in the world has ever had the bollocks to make an album like this, with this kind of flashing fluorescence and electric beauty, not since Bowie did the soundtrack to 'Labyrinth' anyway, and after the pills and thrills of its initial shock value, it's still kinda cool to listen to. Good on Trabant, and good on you should you dare go and listen to this album.
Download clips of three tracks from 'Emotional' HERE.
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