{"id":255,"date":"2004-11-10T23:03:29","date_gmt":"2004-11-11T07:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/?p=255"},"modified":"2023-06-24T00:54:43","modified_gmt":"2023-06-24T07:54:43","slug":"plastic-noise-experience-maschinenmusik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/plastic-noise-experience-maschinenmusik\/","title":{"rendered":"Plastic Noise Experience – “Maschinenmusik”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Plastic Noise Experience<\/span><\/h4>\n

Category<\/span>: Electro-pop
\nAlbum<\/span>: Maschinenmusik<\/em><\/p>\n

Though this album is posed as being \u201cDark-Electro\u201d and \u201cold-school EBM,\u201d it bears more resemblance to the Kraftwerk-ian experimentation of the 70\u2019s and early 80\u2019s. Plastic Noise Experience seems to be expert at taking a new wave flavor and updating it for today, though only barely.<\/p>\n

Around since 1989, PNE should know about the 80\u2019s electronic sound well, but why one would create this kind of throwback in this day and age is a bit beyond me.<\/p>\n

The better tracks begin well, but never deliver anything interesting. \u201cKoma\u201d and \u201cNeue Welt\u201d have good beats and interesting programming and \u201cMonoton Synchron\u201d is decent for what it is, but they never move beyond the most basic layer of minimalism. Many of the other songs throw in almost kitschy Atari-era bleeps and other retro fodder that most bands left behind a decade ago. Its makeup is usually nothing more than a simple drum track combined with one or two light sequences or bass tracks, covered up with Germanic vocals and the occasional retro Moog noise or bloop to spice up the track.<\/p>\n

My German is a bit beyond rusty, but I can still remember enough to know that most of the lyrics are silly in their simplicity and electronic fetishism. And it seems even stranger growled through the thick Laibach-like accent of the vocalist. Combined with the pure minimalism of the music, I can only imagine that the few people who will appreciate this album are the most die-hard Kraftwerk fans.<\/p>\n

The pocket calculator set will surely enjoy some of this, but you have to wonder about a band that intentionally takes the tone that amounted to experimentality and originality in the days when electronic instruments were novel, at best, and try to update it to use the hard EBM drones and beats of other bands to accomplish the same sounds in this day and age, an age when you can do any or all of this on a laptop while grabbing a coffee at Starbucks. The bands that pioneered this sound have moved on with the technology to create more complex and interesting arrangements with broader themes and much more interesting sense of experimentation, but bands like this never seem to want to move past the era when this type of music was made out of necessity instead of laziness and as a throwback to someone else\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

So aside from questioning the relevance and motivation for this style of music, I do have to say that the remixes from the likes of :wumpscut:, Suicide Commando, and Armageddon Dildos make for a pleasurable change from the repetitive beats and tweaky noises. The remixes give greater depth and promise than any original track on the album does, which is sad in a way. It\u2019s nice to think that there\u2019s still a place for a little retro electronic music, but this seems a bit excessive in its lack of desire to create any more than the most simplistic track.<\/p>\n

If the idea of Laibach doing the robot with Herbie Hancock doesn\u2019t sound like excitement to you or you own less than five Kraftwerk albums, you probably wouldn\u2019t enjoy Maschinenmusik<\/em>. Though if you owned five Kraftwerk albums, you wouldn\u2019t need it anyway.<\/p>\n

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from ReGen Magazine (~11\/2004)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plastic Noise Experience Category: Electro-pop Album: Maschinenmusik Though this album is posed as being \u201cDark-Electro\u201d and \u201cold-school EBM,\u201d it bears more resemblance to the Kraftwerk-ian experimentation of the 70\u2019s and early 80\u2019s. Plastic Noise Experience seems to be expert at taking a new wave flavor and updating it for today, though only barely. Around since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-regen"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":472,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ryanspeck.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}