Ernst Horn
Johnny Bumm's Wake
Chrom Records

Ernst Horn is well known in Germany as the main musician behind the dark pop band Deine Lakaien. But he is also a very versatile artist who helps out in many other projects. Now that his main band Deine Lakaien takes a longer break Horn finally, besides all his side projects and production jobs, has the chance to work on a new solo record.

Johnny Bumm's Wake is a sample-based concept album about the current situation in Germany since the German unification. Horn uses mainly samples from TV or radio as well as recorded phone sex lines which he arranged to almost rap like lyrics which combine the frightening facts of political news with the banalities of commercials. You can hear Chancellor Helmut Kohl, recordings of Genscher, Honecker and Hitler, snippets from talk shows, interviews and films. Horn cut out single phrases and mixed them together to make his point. The result is sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, but the mixture of samples is always full of surprises. The sample orgy is accompanied by a soundtrack of synthetic rhythms, sparse dark synth pop and strange sound effects.

As a whole the album tells a story, something like a day in the live of a frustrated German TV viewer skipping through the channels. While listening to the rubbish his frustration is growing. All the promises by politicians or commercials won't be kept, so at the end he is ready to take his life. But then an alarm clock is beeping. It was all a dream, and even the last way out was just an illusion.

Definitely an interesting album, but don't play it at a party. Concentrated listening is recommended...

Copyright © 1998 Lonely Locke