Down (album)

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Down
Studio album from Downwards

Publication
(s)

1988

Label (s) normal

Format (s)

LP, CD

Genre (s)

Punk rock

Title (number)

10

running time

35:18, 47:36

production

Jon Caffery

chronology
The West Is Lonely
(1982) 		Down I watch the ships come down the river
(1990)

Abwärts is a music album by the Hamburg punk band Abwärts . It was released in 1988 as LP and CD by the Bonn record company Normal and is assigned to the punk rock genre.

Music genre

The self-titled Abwärts is the third album by the Hamburg punk band. It is the most poppy, melodic and calmest album of the group to date and less influenced by punk rock or gothic , but can still easily be subsumed under the term post-punk . In addition, for the first time it contains its own texts in English on a larger scale .

History of origin

In December 1985, Frank Z. (Frank Ziegert) , the singer and head of the group, broke up as a result of the negative feedback on the Olympic single. In 1987 the music press reported the group's reunification as a one-man project by Ziegert. And in fact the self-titled Abwärts-Album, which appeared in 1988 after a necessary creative break with the record company Normal, is a solo project by Ziegert, which he recorded together with the musician Peter Horn . Like the EP Beirut, Holiday Inn co-produced the album with Jon Caffery .

Track list LP

Page A:

  1. Colorful bills - 3:02
  2. Alcohol - 3:27 (new setting of the Charles Aznavour chanson You let yourself go )
  3. Neanderthal Man - 4:38
  4. Nice for everyone - 2:57
  5. White House - 3:39

Side B:

  1. You Only Live Twice - 3:23
  2. New Religion - 4:06
  3. Work! - 3:34
  4. Dressed to Kill - 2:14
  5. Masochist - 4:18

Track list CD

  1. Colorful bills - 3:02
  2. Alcohol - 3:27 (new setting of the Charles Aznavour chanson You let yourself go )
  3. Neanderthal Man - 4:38
  4. Nice for everyone - 2:57
  5. White House - 3:39
  6. You Only Live Twice - 3:23
  7. New Religion - 4:06
  8. Work! - 3:34
  9. Dressed to Kill - 2:14
  10. Masochist - 4:18
  11. New Religion (extended mix) - 6:49
  12. Neanderthal Man (extended mix) - 5:29

Publications and tour

The CD version of the album contains two additional songs with the “Extended Mix” versions of the pieces New Religion and Neandertal Man .

The piece of alcohol - an interpretation of the Charles Aznavour chanson You let yourself go - was released as a single. Unexpectedly, it received radio airplay and, like the previous downward debut single Computerstaat, became an independent hit. Inspired by this success, Frank Z. went back to the studio together with Ab downward founding member FM Einheit , who meanwhile concentrated on his other band, Einstürzende Neubauten , to produce a more commercial mix of the song. The result was sent to German radio stations on April 8, 1988 as a single-sided promo single. Although Ziegert did not intend to reform Abwärts as a real band at the time, he and FM Einheit put some musicians together at the beginning of 1988 and played four concerts from April 8 to 12, 1988 in preparation for the single new release. This was published in May 1988 under the title More Alcohol and contained some recent live recordings on the B-side . The video was featured on the Formula One music show on May 28, 1988 . A total of 5500 units of the single were sold.

reception

The album was received with benevolent disinterest by the music press. For the Spex it was a mixed new beginning, undecidedly oscillating between two lecture languages ​​and between new pop boredom and traditional "guitar hacking". In retrospect , the same criticisms were raised in the Zillo : The bilingualism, whereby Frank Z. does not even speak English well, and the pop-heavy load, which is a compromise trap. Individual pieces, such as the " kafkaesque " single success alcohol , were praised, so that the conclusion that "half of the LP was weak" was classified.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See History, on the official downward homepage ( Memento from July 15, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 12, 2014.
  2. ^ Frank Lähnemann: Downwards. Down . In: Spex . January 1988, p. 53 f .
  3. ↑ Thomthom Geigenschrey: Downwards. Biography (part 2) . In: Zillo . July / August, 1991, p. 56 f .

Web links