It seems improbable that Bill Leeb has come this far without creating a solo album. The former Skinny Puppy keyboardist has spent four decades making music as Front Line Assembly. He has had global hits as a member of Delerium. Collaborations have led to productions as Intermix, Noise Unit, Cyberaktif, Equinox, Fauxliage, and Pro>Tech. Now comes news that the Vienna-born, Vancouver-raised maestro has finally released an album of his own.
Model Kollapse is named for the tendency of artificial intelligence systems to fall apart when asked to look at data regressively. Just as photocopies become blurred in subsequent generations, the data in AI systems decomposes and generates false results. Keep that in mind, the next time that you place your reliance on the decision-making of machines.
Leeb’s musical journey really began with Skinny Puppy – a band he left in 1986 to pursue a different vein of hard-edged electronic music. Where the Puppies focussed on gothic and horror imagery, Front Line Assembly took its inspiration from political events, social themes, and science fiction. Model Kollapse owes something to the early tapes that Leeb put together in his bedroom on Canada’s Left Coast, but it is also thoroughly modern in its absorption of darkwave, EBM, and hard electronica.
The opening track, “Demons,” finds Leeb warning “how much darkness and evil exist in the world, some of it created via technology that is here to stay, and how we have to carefully navigate our way through it all on a day-to-day basis.” It’s a tense, driving affair with an edge as sharp as obsidian.
The first single released from the album, “Terror Forms,” is present and correct with support from Shannon Hemmett (Leathers, Actors) and a blinding bassline. There are also turbo-charged rhythms in “Muted Obssession” and “Exotic Forms.” Leeb has a part of his brain that generates Vangelis-like ambient material, and there are hints of it in places, but this is mainly a collection of tracks that lead to the alternative dancefloor. If “Infernum” doesn’t get your black leather boots tapping, then nothing will.
The set concludes with “Erosion Through Time,” which takes a gentler, cerebral approach. Leeb has learned a thing or two through a lifetime in music, and there are delicate touches here that are invested with kinetic power. It is proof that you can thrill with kindness.
It also led to the reorganisation of DAF as the duo of Görl and Delgado. After Die Kleinen…, they clinched a contract with Virgin Records and forged a new, minimal sound. The rest of the band were out, and Miller was told only after the deal was done. It was a messy affair, but it led to a series of albums that set new templates for European electronic music. With only a sequencer, basic synths, a drum kit, and Delgado’s voice, DAF crafted a distinctive sound with songs that cut open the belly of punk. Görl’s drums and electronics steered a path between icy anthems and intimate tracks, avoiding the traps of both 4/4 dance music and pub rock, while Delgado purred and shouted slogans and sensual promises with equal intensity.
The new arrangement was successful, but it didn’t last. It couldn’t have lasted. After three albums in two years, all produced in Conny’s Studio, DAF pulled the plug. The passion that kept the music interesting also led to collisions that blew the partnership apart. They regrouped in 1986 for a dance-oriented album, 1st Step to Heaven, but the tensions kept resurfacing. Over the years, the fans pulled DAF back into the studio and onto the stage, but keeping the band together was a recurring challenge.
In the gaps between DAF projects, Görl continued to produce exceptional music. In 1983, after the first DAF split, Görl returned to Mute Records with the single, “Mit Dir.” That led to a further single and album produced by Mike Hedges, including a collaboration with Annie Lennox of Eurythmics. Görl had provided drums for the Eurythmics’ 1981 single, “Belinda,” which appeared on the Plank-produced album, In the Garden, and kept close to Lennox. Although critically well received, Night Full of Tension failed to ignite Görl’s solo career in the UK.
After the second DAF split, in 1987, Görl went off to study acting in New York; quickly finding himself expelled for having the wrong visa. On return to West Germany, he was picked up by the army, which wanted to know why he hadn’t completed his national service. Faced with the choice of joining the Bundeswehr or making music, Görl split for Paris, where he recorded demos in a suburban flat. He took them to London, where Daniel Miller recommended that he connect with the Canadian prog musician, Dee Long, who had set up as a Fairlight operator at George Martin’s AIR Studios. Long had previously worked with