single // Isn't It Funny How Your Body Works
Released in 1984 by Power Of Voice, this was Nitzer Ebb's debut single. A four track EP produced by Phil Harding and recorded in Dagenham, this bristles with a youthful aggression.
Lead track - 'Isn't It Funny How Your Body Works' - is, despite its school science lesson title - a slab of aggressive electronic music with urgent, fast beats and a sly bassline. Douglas McCarthy's vocals are confident and precise on this post-punk electro workout, half-shouted, half-spat out. Stop-start bass loop and some rattling metallic percussion opens 'The Way We Live'. The drums sound live, and the track recalls both DAF and Can (circa 'I Want More'). Doug is at his most bitter here, his voice shredding and turning to grunts and screams as the track ends.
'Crane' is the most clearly punk-inspired track here, the vocals almost sneering in that time-old fashion of non-conformity. Final track 'War' is bitter, vengeful, with shouted vocals and some random wordplay that sounds like it was created using the same process from which the band derived their name.
Nitzer Ebb's use of electronics ensured that the pace was maintained, even on a high-speed track like 'War' - even though they leant into the punk spirit, if they had been using conventional guitars and drums, these four tracks would have fizzled out into chaos after a while. This EP is hard-hitting, danceable electropunk of the highest order.
single // Warsaw Ghetto
I have been searching for this long-deleted second Nitzer Ebb release for over 10 years, and after all that I managed to buy it through Amazon of all places. Two tracks in a nondescript grey, black and yellow sleeve, produced by Phil Harding, and released originally by POV in 1985. The punctuation-free sleeve notes tell us prophetically that one is for killing the other for kissing.
Give a track a name like 'Warsaw Ghetto', and you imbue that track with a certain earnestness, given the horrifying events that took place in said ghetto. However, this is a far cry from Laibach's art/music depiction of Eastern Europe's political history. At about seven minutes long, this is one of the Ebb's longest tracks. Trademark elements abound - thudding drums, cyclical electronic percussion and buzzing, repetitive basslines. A simple, dark square-wave synth melody cruises along the top, while Doug delivers an intense, wordy vocal, which - aside from the odd word - is near indecipherable. Strangely enough, despite the minimal changes in the track, seven minutes just flies by, the chugging 4/4 beats lending themselves perfectly to an elongated DJ set.
'So Bright So Strong' is the 'kissing' track. Love isn't a concept you'd expect Nitzer Ebb to be dealing with, but this track is actually pretty tender. Well, it's faster than 'Warsaw Ghetto', and still features arpeggiating basslines and solid beats, but the melody is jaunty and pretty pleasant in an early Depeche style, and Doug's vocals are delivered in a higher key than usual. A love song for the electropunks, perhaps, but this is one of the Ebb's most pop-esque moments. Toward the end of the track, Doug stops singing and instead exhales rapidly in time with the beat, a style he would use again and again, particularly on the late POV release 'Get Clean'.
single // Murderous
'Murderous' is one of those slightly rare releases that falls between two labels, and represents a band very much in transition. Seemingly released on Mute in 1986 under exclusive licence from Power Of Voice - with a POV catalogue number - this 7" and 12" have never appeared in any Mute catalogue I have seen, and neither do they appear in the list of POV releases in the sleeve notes to 'Isn't It Funny How Your Body Works', 'Warsaw Ghetto' or 'Get Clean'. Given that 'Murderous' and its B-side 'Fitness To Purpose' both appear on the debut album That Total Age, this is technically the first single from the album, not 'Let Your Body Learn' as most people think.
There is something distinctly odd about this release, not least of which is the sleeve. Almost without exception, the band's sleeves were minimal and stark, deploying simple imagery and bold text. Here, however, Bon and Doug are cast as soft-focus boyband pinups, which couldn't be further removed from the brutal aggression within. Worse still is one of my personal pet hates - not correctly titling tracks. There is no mention of the fact that the version of 'Murderous' on the 7" is in fact an edit of the full length version on the 12". Also, the 'Repetition' version of 'Murderous' on the 12" was actually retitled as an 'Instrumental' when packaged as a bonus track on the That Total Age CD.
Gripes aside, these tracks are awesome, exuding a quality of production and slickness that makes their two previous singles quite naïve by comparison. Phil Harding again provides the production, but the style feels like they got themselves some better equipment, or maybe it’s because of the mixing desk that they detail on the sleeve. 'Murderous' is a fast-paced aggressive 4/4 track aimed at alternative dancefloors, with chanted, ordered vocals sharing the same urgent quality as the following year's 'Join In The Chant'. Layers of percussion blend well with the repetitive, modulating bassline. 'Fitness To Purpose', on the other hand, is brutal in a wholly different way, being a track based entirely on percussion loops and barked vocals.