A refresher: my name is Sel, and I haven’t written for TRUANTS in ages. I can assure all my many, many fans that there has been good reasoning for this – you see one day I fancied myself as a bit of a posh gap year type and decided to do a spot of travelling around Europe. It was good. That said, I’m back now and ready to (re)start making my contributions to TRUANTS once again, and with all this ‘new blood’ flying around I figured what better time to (re)start than now?

A refresher: I generally write about obscure or forgotten-about music that needs unearthing or remembering, because I fancy myself as a bit of a pretentious type. My posts are full of wonderful gems that generally aren’t so in keeping with the club cuts that usually get posted here, because everyone needs a break every so often. A refresher: I’ve been travelling. Look, yeah, I know I only mentioned this one paragraph ago but it’s relevant. You see whilst I was away I thought it’d be a SWELL idea to do a series of posts about music from all the countries that I visited (or, if I don’t actually know any music from that country, something that is tediously linked to it).

Onwards! Whilst I didn’t start my own journey in Germany, I’m going to start there for the purpose of this post. Specifically, Munich. In this wonderful city I visited a club that was, by-and-large, a bit shit. In there however I saw a totally righteous dude wearing a totally righteous Liaisons Dangereuses t-shirt. As I said, I am a pretentious man who listens to pretentious music, and Liaisons Dangereuses are about as pretentious as you get. They are also fucking awesome. A part of me wanted to commend him for this as he was clearly awesome, but then I realised that my German skills were quite rudimentary and the only thing I could likely say to him would be along the lines of ordering a taxi. A part of me also thought that Liaisons Dangereuses, as obscure as they may be in the United Kingdom, could be national megastars in Germany for all I knew and I’d be making something of a fool out of myself. That, admittedly, was unlikely, but it still nagged at my mind.

But anyway, a brief explanation for the uninitiated: Liaisons Dangereuses were an electronic body music act from somewhere in Germany (I can’t find out specifically where). They were made up of sometime members of NDW acts Einstürzende Neubauten and Deutsch Amerkanische Freundschaft (the former I’m not a big fan of, but the latter I love) as well as nutso vocalist Krishna Goineau. When they played live they were sometimes joined by Anita Lane who used to be involved with Nick Cave ‘n shit. (Aside – NDW, for those that may not know, stands for Neue Deutsche Welle, the German New Wave. It was a short-lived movement in the 1980s consisting of messed up German pop music that was really really good. Popular artists included Rheingold, Grauzone and the afore-mentioned DAF, and those that like the sound of these should listen to stuff that came out on Welt-Rekord, or DJ Hell’s rather good New Deutsch compilation which joins the dots between NDW and modern dance music).

So anyway, Liaisons Dangereuses made electronic body music and released one album in their time. It’s a pretty startling album to listen to that is absolutely miles ahead of its time – to think it’s nearly thirty years old is crazy. Their sparse, vacant sound, their unbreaking, pulsating beats and the general spasticism of their synthesisers was unlike anything else at the time, and the language-swapping, wacked out vocals are out of this world. Their most popular song is the hypnotic Los Niños Del Parque, though I’m choosing to share my personal favourite, Peut Etre…Pas. Despite being one of the oddest things ever recorded there’s something undeniably groovy about this, and it still sounds absolutely wicked today.

They went on to be a huge influence on techno and house music, with legends such as DJ Sneak and Carl Craig have sampled them, whilst they appear in many a mix by respected DJs. Vocalist Krishna Goineau had another, similar project a few years later called Velodrome who released one EP that was likewise very good.

LIAISONS DANGEREUSES – PEUT ETRE… PAS (128 kbps)

That’s all for Germany (for now). Tune in next week for another exciting adventure. ?