COLUMN ONE

Dream Time

CD, 90 Wasser / Dossier

It is startling how weird and distorted mindsets Column One is able to reveal with barely scratching the surface of what our society presents to its members on a daily basis. From little kids fotographed in pin-up-poses for regular catalogues selling underwear for kids via mailorder to bikini-clad beauties licking ice-cream on megaposters above rushing and hustling pedestrians in a random, grey subway station, from the wording used in contact-ads in the back of newspapers to the pseudo-ethnological travel-diaries on the front pages. Using sex with erotic images or connotations to sell, prevail, rule and overpower has become so normal that it our senses and perception don’t even realize it anymore. Why are there three young women lying in the grass on my milk-pack? (I prefer the one with the funny comic-drawn cow on the packaging anyway – who bought that one?) Most of us would agree that sex-maniacs are a closed circle of people, who obey to their obsession with sex in back alleys, seedy shops and the privacy of their own seedy homes. But it is not true. The sex industry is one of the biggest growing parts of economy. But it is not only pornography and sex shops, but how all encompassing erotic images and offers are. I mean, even my mp3-encoder offers a musical genre called porno-groove. What is that all about?

In contrast to artist like Jean Bach, who prefer beating the bush as hard as possible by calling his records “homofotze” and putting half an hour of recorded sex-line-ads from tv on them, Column of One prefer the more subtle approach. On “Janine” samples from a sex-line-ad are mixed with gentle beats and a dark jazzy singing voice in an atmosphere that is closer to the Thievery Corporation than the sounds of a darkroom in a swinger club. That is until you realize the song that jazz singer is singing, which goes “whatever you want me to do / I will do” thereby transforming the complete commitment to a love relationship in its purest form into one of masochistic intent and complete devotion. The effect is quite the same, but I feel that Column One’s approach has a more lasting effect. During the course of “Dream Time” the deconstruction and transformation of movie and porno samples, lyrics formed from newspaper articles and personal ads, parts of audio-tracks for hypnosis slowly unfold the sick and disgusting inner layers of the power-relationships prevailing in matters sexual. On the surface these tracks don’t sound harsh or brutal; the music is mostly synth-sounds, minimalist beats and some of the electronic music reminds strongly of the early Eighties. Some of the tracks on “Dream Time” are less songs or tracks but blown up audio-dramas, especially the intensely capturing “The girl who had everything” (remember the movie?) which spreads over the record in three parts. But the steady reiteration of the same sample starts to get nerve-wrecking, on purpose I guess, to really free the undertones and bring them to light.

Reality today is 99 % mediated and there is nothing we can do to change that. But there is a lot left to do to make people realize it. The steady influx of news, entertainment, pictures, offers, advertising, songs, factoids, fashion, and architecture gets mixed into a big, molassy slew of info-tidbits that drips into our minds ever since we were born. There is no way to get out of this system and I wonder if fighting it from the inside is futile; if the fight will just be incorporated into another part of the system, sponsored by a giant corporation and newscasted on webtv and billboards. Column One, ever since their foundation around 1990 (as far as I remember) in Berlin have focused on various aspects of what presents itself to us as reality. In a world where watching music television with the sound off seems like a subversive act intended to realize the not so subtle mechanics of the music industry to charge brands with image and emotion to give them more sales edge and to be on equity (that’s what the booty call is all about, y’know), I welcome the approach by Column One deeply.

Final remark: the CD comes in a – I don’t dare call it beautiful but beautifully designed cover booklet, with lots of graphic information and collages further explaining the intent of the songs and their content via more deconstruction. The second booklet contains amongst other stuff all lyrics from the spoken samples from the tracks in English and German.

Addendum: You might have noticed how I avoided using words like “perverted” or sex freaks” in this review, because I am not going to offer any judgements or solutions to the issue, partly because I don’t have any real solutions apart from common places such as “try to respect each and other and live together peacefully”, partly because I don’t think it is possible anyway and mostly because I don’t want to start a discussion in which every participant is all about his own little agenda and it all ends in a mess of single-minded opinions being thrown at each other. And that is something I won’t partake in.