album // Die Kleinen Und Die Bosen
Translating as The Small And The Bad, this currently out-of-print Mute album was the first LP on the label, dating back to 1980, back when they were still based in Decoy Avenue, North London.
Across 19 awesome tracks, DAF variously combined the energetic drums, bass and guitars of punk with developing arpeggiated synth sequences and sexual vocalisations from Gabi Delgado-Lopez (also presciently credited with 'geräusche' or 'noise'). From listening to these tracks nearly 25 years on from when they were recorded, what's immediately obvious is how much of an influence they must have had on the punk generation growing up in the UK and Europe in grey 1970s and early 1980s, and how their blueprint sound clearly infiltrated some of Mute's subsequent 'signings' - DAF's simple approach to electronics (repetition and slow additive patterns) are echoed most obviously in early Depeche Mode (check out the closing 'Y La Gracia') and Nitzer Ebb (check out the 'Out Of My Head'-reminiscent lyrics on 'Osten Währt Am Längsten'), but also provides a direct link to techno and acid house.
If Kraftwerk were the 'accepted' face of electronic music with their smooth productions and pleasant sounds, DAF were the exciting burst of energy and adventure that was required to shake up the slightly austere ambience of that Düsseldorf quartet. 'Nacht Arbeit' is for me the most exciting here, a spiky electronics-driven track with what sounds very similar to 303 squelches from Chrislo Haas and Robert Görl, plus some highly angular guitar lines from Wolfgang Spelmans to puncture the underlying electronic firmament.
Recorded with Conny Plank at his now legendary studios, the album also includes a number of tracks recorded live and then remixed back in the studio by the influential producer. Plank adds something of a pop sheen to some of the studio tracks, a style that DAF would exploit further on their later albums following their defection to Virgin. Where the full-on studio tracks include the synth flourishes that would become DAF trademarks, the live tracks are only embellished with occasional granular, dirty noises and loops, and the atmosphere is more aggressive than sexual, evoking a crystal clear punk ethic that sits slightly uncomfortably with what would have been side A's sub pop tracks. Delgado-Lopez's vocals here have an incredibly raw tone, recalling early Neubauten or even Nick Cave, at times rising to a falsetto that reminds me of Sparks' Russell Mael during one of Cabaret's most debauched scenes.
In experimental music in the early '80s, DAF's Mute debut was simultaneously a nod to their predecessors - Suicide's debut album is a very close reference point - but in their weaving of electronic texture into tracks such as the standout 'Co Co Piña' were also pointing to the EBM sounds of the future.