This latest collection of Jörg Burger's tinkly downbeat techno speaks to Matador's archivist approach to electronica. Matador's previously released Burger works such as the Modernist, and his collaboration with Wolfgang Voigt (aka Gas, aka Mike Ink), Burger/Ink. The label is clearly convinced that everything this guy creates is worthy of preservation. This is a false assumption.
It's true that, since his conversion to all things ecstatically bangin', Burger has released some real treats. The Modernist's Explosion and Burger/Ink's Las Vegas are both rich in fuzzy Cologne machine-funk and Nicolas Grimshaw-ish reflective surfaces. However, this latest compilation, which draws on Burger's solo work from 1993-1997, will disappoint all of us converted by the previous albums. Drawing from the shallow well of downtempo techno mood music, none of Lubricate Your Living-Room's eighteen tracks dare to grab you, or even pluck up enough courage to ask if you wouldn't mind paying attention for just a brief moment.
The collection begins in an ironically porno fashion with "Electric Campfire (In a Neo-Ackerman Style)," on which a lazily strummed guitar nuzzles up to languidly bobbing synth-wobbles. After we've become thoroughly attuned to the slack groove, a breathy lady recites the title before some snaggle-toothed, unkempt fellow starts reading from a hardcore grot novel. The guy reads the excerpt in such a unengaged manner that I wonder if Burger's intent is less to titillate (as fellow Cologner Khan would desire) than to express his opinion on the banality of porn. If this is Burger's intent, his unremarkable accompaniment to the reading complements perfectly.
"Theme," originally released on the Bionaut's 1996 LP, Please Teenage!, is a pretty, bass-burden lope through machine-tooled sterility. "Lush Life Electronica," culled from the 1995 album of the same name, maintains a reasonably pleasant, downy-soft vibe and brings back the hazy acoustic guitar of "Electric Campfire." "The Juicy Reminder," from the same album, benefits from a propulsive low-end pulse that forces an urgency on the track that the huge synth washes and delicately echoed electro-spangles lack.
Also excerpted from the Lush Life Electronica album, "Student Bashing at the Seaside" depicts the beauty of the coastline, where the violence of doffing up college kids takes place rather than the actual busting of ribs and bruising of limbs. Here's another example of Burger either being a stern commentator on violence (or just being a wildly inappropriate titler of tracks). However, with "Memphis Sci-Fi," Burger's got it just right. Amid the Tennessee twangs, he scatters \xB5-ziq bursts of percussive white noise and lets the two opposites rub against each other for three minutes.
From the 1993 album Music for Stock Exchange (recorded under the guise of Ethik-- essentially a split CD with solo material by both Burger and Wolfgang Voigt) comes the pad-saturated "Bluebelle (The Birth of a Bionaut)," which bobs along with percussive tinkles and a softly looping Detroit-style bassline. "P. Bateman," also drawn from the Ethik sessions, serves as an homage to no one's favorite anti-hero, American Psycho's Patrick Bateman. The track sounds like Yellow Magic Orchestra outfitted with up-to-date studio gear, but once again relies on sheer banality (perhaps) to convey Burger's low opinion of Bateman's infamous serial murdering.
Burger has a much higher opinion of a character he calls "Wild Horse Annie." He devoted an EP to telling her tale, and Lubricate Your Living-Room contains two of its cuts. On "Der Kurze Weg," Burger incorporates unpredictable chord changes, coming off like an impossible blissful Richard D. James. And "Wild Horse Annie as Herself" glistens in its sterility, an aloof spaghetti-western guitar piece prepared for an exhibition of Mies van der Rohe furniture.
The irresolvable problem with Lubricate Your Living-Room is that the anthology fails to introduce anything new. Why does Matador think that a compilation of material at least four years (and several genre-shifts) old was worth releasing? The true Bionaut fans would have bought the source EPs and albums years ago, and those hooked by the previous Matador releases of Jörg Burger's work will be unavoidably disappointed. I suppose lounge DJs might find something breezy enough to slip in between Nicola Conte and Dining Rooms tracks. The rest of us don't have to look far to find much more invigorating living-room lubricants: DNTEL's Life is Full of Possibilities and the Other Peoples Place's Lifestyles of Laptop Café leap instantly to mind as superlative examples. When Burger does come up with some spanking new tracks, I trust Matador won't wait five years or so to release them.
