Die Welt 04.09.2007

Terrorism researcher Walter Laqueur sees our civilisation threatened by modern terrorism: "For the first time in the history of humanity, it will be technically possible for a few people, perhaps even a single person, to kill millions and make large parts of our earth uninhabitable. In fact, it may not even be terrorists in the familiar sense, but religious fanatics, lunatics, people who are convinced that our sinful world must be destroyed... These may not be our last days, but we'll have to get used to the fact that we can no longer close our eyes to this danger."


Süddeutsche Zeitung 04.09.2007

French world music artist Manu Chao has put out a new album today, "La Radiolina." For Alex Rühle, it sounds like the title music to the 1970's children's series "Das feuerrote Spielmobil" which is to be understood as a compliment. "The texts are polyglot collages. In one and the same song Manu Chao can bring together French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and English to a kind of globalised newspeak. Added to that are sounds of the street, laughter, people yacking, radio snippets and repeated police sirens, with quick cuts and a crackly sound as if someone had recorded it with a hand camera at a demonstration. From time to time melody lines from one of the previous songs play in the background, like a radio changing frequencies."


Frankfurter Rundschau 04.09.2007

The colourful Berlin band Culcha Candela has moved into the upper regions of the charts with their third album. But creating something coherent out of the seven band members with roots in Columbia, Korea, Poland, Uganda and Germany can be tricky, as Thomas Winkler discovers. "In most bands one person does all the talking, but this band is made up of a DJ and six singers and rappers who are all talented at upstaging one another and love speaking their minds. And even if one of them manages to convince one half of the band that it makes sense to talk to the others just for clarity's sake, they should expect that there'll be an older lady sitting at the far end of the table whose role is never really explained but who nevertheless holds her rather harshly stated opinions on the subject for indispensable."


Die Tageszeitung 04.09.2007

Andreas Hartmann reports on the CD/DVD release of an interpretation of Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music by the Zeitkratzer ensemble. Rheinhold Friedl is the group's the musical director, a man who has made a name for himself by working with rock and pop musicians to explode the constraints of New Music. "The most spectacular new interpretation ever made by this internationally celebrated ensemble is now out on CD and DVD five years after its premiere in the Haus der Berliner Festspiele during the MaerzMusik Festival. In this celebrated concert Zeitkratzer played an interpretation of Lou Reed's entire 'Metal Machine Music' album from 1975. Shortly before the end, Lou Reed himself walked onto the stage, sat on a chair, grabbed his electric guitar, took over the command of the orchestra from Friedl and drew out from his guitar those famous feedback loops which made 'Metal Machine Music' one of the most idiosyncratic records in musical history. And Reed said: It's great what you're doing there."