Lindstrom - Where You Go I Go Too

LINDSTROM - WHERE YOU GO I GO TOO (Smalltown Supersound)

It really is as if punk never happened. Norwegians with facial hair taking the likes of Manuel Gottsching, Klaus Schulze and Giorgio Moroder as their inspiration produce epic albums of cosmic trance with 30 minute long tracks and get this, happen to be horribly fashionable at the same time, getting the chance to remix the likes of Madonna and DJ at hip clubs throughout the world. Not only are they reinventing trance, slowing it down to a more preferable speed but they’re making those older gurus of the synthesizer acceptable once again. It’s as if two of the most unhip genres have been spliced together, two negatives making a positive.

The emergence of the “cosmic disco” movement over the past few years is indicative of a divergence from the increasingly minimal aspect of electronic dance music, but also arguably signals the wish to go back a time more irreverent and ultimately less abstract. Mr Lindstrom has taken all his influences, like Cerrone, Schulze and Gottsching and made a slick dancefloor album that is pretty much as one might expect listening to those records and applying more modern studio sounds to it, namely a thumping backbeat. One could argue that “Where You Go I Go Too” perhaps alludes to this, as he doesn’t really attempt to conceal anything, even chucking in a blatant riff from Cerrone that to his credit transforms into something quite dramatic with a lovely key change. As with his forebears he also makes no effort to edit or shorten any of the tracks, with the title track clocking in at 28 minutes, but in fairness this does have several “movements” which make up the whole song. “Grand Ideas” isn’t really, although its insistent synth lead is ideal for a club. The final track sees him revert to Balearic-style 100 bpm grooves very much in the mould of Studio, and even stealing the intro from Tangerine Dream’s Poland.

I will admit, as a fan of all things related to German synthesizer music from that hallowed period, that this album is very enjoyable to listen to, but deep down below the surface there’s not a great deal to explore. The origins of the German kosmische movement are much deeper than a mere desire to make music to take drugs to, as they sought to remove the idea of rhythm as the central force of the music they were making. Lindstrom, like so many modern artists, takes and ultimately welds together those ideas with rhythm, but somewhere along the line he loses the soul of what the former was trying to achieve. Like so much of this style of music, it is successful in its immediacy but lacks depth on repeated listening.

Toby Frith

Lindstrom Myspace