Screenwriting guru Robert McKee once joked that the shortest book possible would be a history of German humor. He said this, I believe, without having read a single interview with Markus Popp. The dour German stereotype may be common for people in the States raised on "Sprockets," but it's just not accurate. Exhibit A: Flanger.
Look at the front of this record cover: Atom Heart and Burnt Friedman standing on the barren surface of some distant planet in full astronaut gear. Only it's not really them, just some cropped press photos of their faces pasted into jpegs pulled from the NASA site. They look so damn goofy standing there on that planet, but they're clearly in on the fun. And then there are long-winded the liner notes, written by a fellow named James Dean Brown, which claim, "The only way of downscaling Burnt's musical-conviction potentiometer is to previously install a logical bypass."
On second thought, Mr. Dean Brown could be on to something. A potentiometer is an instrument for analyzing electrical potential, and Outer Space/Inner Space is vastly superior to last year's Midnight Sound because it contains so much more possibility. Both records are basically light cocktail jazz manipulated via computer, but where the source of Midnight Sound's crackly, raw material seemed nebulous, Outer Space/Inner Space is a crisp recording of live musicians who put some energy in their playing. Hearing this more "natural" approach bumping against the electronics gives the record a great deal more tension than the sleepy Midnight Sound could muster. It also makes the listening more fun.
The third track, "The Men Who Fell from Earth," is a nice illustration of what I'm talking about. The opening section blends percussive static hits with manipulated drum runs of inhuman tempo, and then the piece abruptly transforms into lazy downtempo lounge for a couple of minutes before accelerating once again into spastic glitch music. Each individual part is rendered properly, but you'd never imagined that they could fit together so well, or indeed, that they could fit together at all. "Lo Dernier Combat" is another track that seamlessly modulates from Medeski, Martin and Wood-style instrumental jazz to abstract electronics and back again. The skill here is in the transitions-- not only are they not jarring, but each stylistic shift seems perfectly logical. Odd guitar treatments crop up here and there, courtesy of enigmatic Cologne musician Josef Suchy, lending another intriguing texture.
The tracks that fall outside the conceptual framework still impress with their melodic sense and rhythmic interplay. Though the album was no doubt edited on computer and it's quite possible that none of the musicians actually performed together (the notes list separate recording studios for each of the instruments), the infectiousness of the Latin beats is undeniable, and the three Chilean percussionists credited help give the record an impressive syncopated pulse. "Inner Spacesuit," in particular, absolutely bubbles with rhythm, and it always makes me wish I had a drink of some kind in my hand when I hear it. But this straight-up track has a surprising coda, as the rhythm fades and Suchy's processed guitar harmonics take over, sending the piece spinning off in a completely different but equally attractive direction. Both funny ha-ha and funny strange, Outer Space/Inner Space is worth exploring.
