Gudrun Gut's dazzlingly diverse quarter-century career began with an infinitesimally brief yet pace-setting stint as a percussionist in the earliest incarnation of Einstürzende Neubauten, and currently ends at I Put a Record On. In the intervening span, Gut became practically a thread unto herself in Berlin's underground art and music scenes. She explored cross-sections of new wave, techno, spoken word, multimedia art, and experimental rock in bands like Mania D, Malaria!, Matador, and Project Miasma. There have been film scores, radio plays, videos projects, gallery exhibitions, remixes, a record label, DJ gigs, and the eclectic, collective radio show "The Ocean Club". It seems as if Gut has tried just about everything except the obvious-- making a proper solo album.
Now she can tick that off her list as well. It's surprising that it's taken her so long to get around to it, even more so that the album is ingenuous and approachable at a career point when Gut could get away with being as pretentious as she liked. Her zigzagging trajectory through Berlin music is certainly compressed in I Put a Record On, but to interpret her solo album as a career-capping statement is to miss the point. As its title so simply declares, it is a straightforward appreciation-- a record about liking records.
While Gut's solo debut has certain overarching qualities-- her Marlene Dietrich-style purr, which implies a good-humored Teutonic chic; smeary, grayscale hazes of techno and dub; and a dark, crackling energy-- its stylistic divagations can be mapped only along the ley lines of Gut's musical honorees. The liner notes of the vinyl LP link each song to an artist, place, or concept that inspired it, and many of Gut's more predictable influences are present. "Cry Easy" pays homage to ESG with stiff, percolating funk, building bar by looped bar toward an itchy canter. "Blätterwald" leavens New Order's anthemic new wave with power-tool synths, and "The Land" is lambent, minimal techno in The Field's vein, couched in Gut's proclivity for detuned shimmy.
But some of the best tracks here find Gut dovetailing more surprising influences with her playful, rough-hewn electro. Nowhere is her mischievous spirit more apparent than on "Rock Bottom Riser", the only actual cover on the album. Remaking Smog's folk dirge as a galumphing seether sounds like an awful idea on paper, but Gut pulls it off with aplomb, singing all around the beat and breaking into giggles near the end. She completely overhauls the song while remaining true to its spirit, making the impish energy undergirding all of Smog's music explicit.
She also has an affinity for adventurous undie-hop: the shadowy, dubby billows of "Sweet" takes their cue from Dabrye, and cLOUDDEAD inspired the sweetly fractured nursery song "The Wheel". And album standout "Move Me", where snatches of polka are caught up in a scintillating web of swirling synths and ice-blue vocals, is dedicated simply to "Buenos Aires". Gut seems to understand that being able to get away with anything doesn't make it a good idea, and, paired with the confidence to wear her influences, quite literally, on her sleeve, she's produced an album that's charmingly humble and musically satisfying in equal measure.
