Mein Herren und Damen. Aus Schweden. Conny Olivetti’s Electric Machine Music 2.
This album was released during the Pandemic. Olivetti says that this version is an improvement on the original, so we have approached it kalt. If Ridley Scott can rework and refine Blade Runner, then why not culture workers?
The lead track is a collage of Kraftwerk-esque sounds that grounds the theme. Olivetti has reproduced the sound and feeling of Kling Klang products from the 1970s with a great deal of care. The song titles reference the inspiration directly: “Klick Klack,” “Factory Worker,” “Der Computer nr 3.” In a world where Kraftwerk has become the best Kraftwerk covers band in the world, why shouldn’t someone else explore the vitality and possibilities of these sounds and rhythms?
Komputer did it first. The evolution of I Start Counting and Fortran 5 led to the richness of “Valentina Tereshkova” and “Intercom.” OMD had their own go at spinning up Dusseldorf-style electronics. Olivetti’s effort is a contribution to the line of music-making that Karl Bartos brought to the party and Ralf Hütter claimed proprietary rights in. It is the sound of the worker and the bourgeois in perpetual tension, mediated through circuitry.
“Nuclear Test Site” features oral history from sailors who were used as part of Cold War planning. Their testimony speaks for itself. Hütter and Florian Schneider preferred to romanticise the technology of the metropolis and computer age, albeit with critical asides (“Sellafield…”, “Interpol and Deutsche Bank…”). Olivetti’s approach is more open, politically., while avoiding didacticism.
There are moments of ambience and groove. The latter is found most robustly in “Grenzwellen für immer,” which channels elements of “Musique Non Stop,” “Radioactivity,” and “Computer World” into a single dynamic.
It’s a clever composition that leaves you with the question: when the robots come, which side will you be on?