German Army—Taushiro 2x flexi disc + a few more

German Army

Taushiro 2x flexi disc + a few more

Weird Ear

This is the best thing I have ever received to review. This is why I need to post these reviews. German Army is definitely the best band I have discovered in the last couple years and this release is my #1 of this year. Everything else I come across this year is going have a hard time even making it to #2. Anyhow, the music is wonderful as always. Super short tracks that know exactly when to stop. German Army has been called the new Coil and I can certainly hear it but they have something totally their own. These tracks are all like familiar dreams you have forgotten until you hear this. Good music, art, books, poetry can all take you close to infinity. These songs are that type of transcendence. They allow you to place your hand into the stream of time and be okay with all inevitabilities. Some are scary, some are comforting and some are mundane but all are yours and in that way they are all beautiful. That is pretty hyperbolic, I know, but I honestly think German Army will make you feel more at ease with your own death. 

Then there is the layout. Holy fuck-balls this is amazing. So much thought has gone into this flexi-disc release that it almost eclipses the music quality but in reality it actually lives up to it. Two flexis that live together in their sleeve that share letters so they have to be put together to read the names. Aside from that there are some random seeming letters but if you rotate the discs together you get another message out to the letters there. The sleeve cover is basically directions to do that and it could have looked kinda hokey but Sightlab, the designers of this sleeve, pulled it off in a beautiful way. I’m probably wrong but it looks like they used Knockout (bold and light) and Gotham as the fonts for this one which always look amazing together (just ask the USPS.) I wish I could work for Sightlab and I wish I could be German Army’s next store neighbor. I seriously can’t get enough…

And to prove that here are a few more German Army releases I have received lately:

German Army

In Transit cd

Dub Ditch Picnic

This cd collect a ton of previous German Army cassettes that are long OOP. Some of them are cassettes I missed out on so I am glad to have the tracks here. All excellent work, some of it stronger that others, but it shows a real strong progression although I don’t think the tracks are on here chronologically. Definitely one for your library. The layout is fine, nothing to get excited about. Some cool photos and some minimal type. I really do not like how the disc itself was handled. It’s weird and off-putting. It looks like the graphic you’d see before a 90’s stand up special. Still, overall, it’s acceptable. 

German Army 

Tassili Plateau

Field Hymns

Again, it’s fucking great. With a lot of experimental music you aren’t really able to judge the ability of the musician but you are really able to judge the taste level. German Army has a very high taste level. They know exactly how long a track should be and they always give you exactly what you need. It might not be what you want but it is perfect. I would like to go back and read my earliest review of German Army and see what I said. I am now a die-hard fan (and I am not a die-hard fan of almost any band, maybe Craw) but I wonder how I felt before this mania had take me. Anyway, the tracks on here are great. Some more synth type stuff mixed with some pretty rad found stuff. It’s like a soundtrack to the best movie only you have ever seen. The layout is killer. Yellow and red playing off each other and creating transparencies of orange here and there. It accompanies the music really well. 

German Army

Millerite Masai

Yerevan Tapes

More great stuff. I don’t even know what to say about this one but I should figure it out because I have one more to write about today… This is a little older. It sat in my stack for awhile before I was able to get to it. The opening track has this rad, sleezy future vibe that I am digging. This whole tape could easily be the soundtrack to the next Blade Runner movie and I wouldn’t be surprise. Somewhere in the near future German Army are becoming the next Daft Punk but without all the sex with underage girls. I hope when I get the Dead Formats podcast going German Army will be okay with me using their tracks as my intro and outro.

The layout is great. The limitations of the label’s budget were not evident in the execution of the artwork. It’s beautiful work and has the nice detail of all the songs on the cover instead of a more traditional layout. I love when people flip the script like that. Keep it up.

German Army

Clan Chieftains

Handmade Birds

Out of all the recent cassette releases from German Army this is the first one you must seek out. Handmade Birds do excellent work—they put out my cassette so there’s your proof—but this release is something special. The music on this one is a bit more complicated that usual. It really pulls from all these different parts of your own mind and brings you something completely unique and also familiar. It really is the soundtrack to all of our minds’ constructions. I feel with German Army that there is something pure happening. Something that connects us to forever. I am not a religious person but this could maybe qualify as religious devotion. I think I need to own everything by German Army. Now to just go back in time…

The layout is simple and relatively traditional but there is some really interesting contrasting complimentary color-play going on here. Yellow and purple aren’t exactly what you first think of when you decide to put together a layout and that is a really nice surprise. Joe Beres from Small Doses put this together—who was going to do a 3” for me, I will have to bug him again—and with that you know it is going to handled very tastefully. The type is excellent and the contrasting inside and outside are a nice touch.