"Folky acoustic electronica from a crazy German."
Vocoder-lovers are in luck. Zoomer is the second full-length album from Dirk Dresselhaus, aka Schneider tm. Instead of keeping with the same instrumental only tracks like he did with his first album Moist, Schneider tm has determined for himself a strange crossover of electronica with a crooning folk flavor. The break that really brought this album into fruition was the release of the Binokular EP (2000) where he collaborated with Kpt. Michi Gan covered The Smith's "There is a Light That Never Goes Out" giving it a glittering robotic veneer as "The Light 3000".
Released on City Slang on September 23, 2002, Zoomer is like listening to the imagination of a robot. With Zoomer, Schneider tm fuses real instruments and a melodic charm with scattered loops and broken beats. Though he has been compared to a range of artists, from Aphex Twin to Depeche Mode to Beck, his lyrical tangent make him come across with more warmth and soul than many of his electronic peers. Though this album has been categorized as technically electronica, it leans into the strange genre of blip pop.
Songs such as "Reality Check" and "Frogtise" have curious graphic zoomorphic imagery comparable to Beck's usual heartfelt yet nonsensical lyrics, while "DJ Guy?" has the Kraftwerkian repetition that will either drive you insane or groove your freakin pants off.
"You've got to keep your heart open" Dirk says straight up, with his typical bulls-eye brevity. "When you're in a certain heightened state of sensitivity, you feel all the different sounds, melodies, and words. The trick then is to keep your ears open for the right moment when it all just happens to fall together and then get it on the hard drive. That's one of the main points of this record."
TRACK LISTING:
1. Reality Check
2. Frogtoise
3. Abyss
4. DJ Guy?
5. Turn On
6. Hunger
7. 999
8. Cuba Tm
Reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A832853
Reference: http://www.musicomh.com/albums/schneider-tm.htm
Reference: http://www.technomusic.com/reviews/schneider.html