Michaela Melián´s Monaco sounds more like what we all think Berlin should sound – dour, Nazi-raped, Cold War chilly, with old Prussian dueling scars on both cheeks. Melián is an orchestra unto herself, playing cello, Spanish and electric guitars, banjo, zither, bass, glasses, glockenspiel, kalimba, organ and synthesizer (only once is she accompanied, by Ching Ying Hsieh on the mellophonium, a kind of trumpet with a goiter). She´s also an artist and professor in time-based media and member of the now august Freiwiliige Selbstkontrolle (F.S.K. as of twenty-five years ago). The warmth of her acoustic instruments juxtaposes tantalizingly with an otherwise machine-made repetitiveness – waving in and keeping at arm´s length, simultaneously.
Monaco is the third in a trilogy of solo “city” albums, following Baden-Baden and Los Angeles. The layered strings and dead hand piano of ´Delta of Venus´ and ´Place Stalingrad´ establish the drear mood and the unhappy-Nina Hagen vocals of Bowie´s ´Scary Monsters´ bring all the supercreeps out of the shadows. But satiny is the darkness that descends with ´Promenadplatz´, romantic, cinematic, the theme played over a montage of a lively Lana Turner in a Fassbinder film. ´Remise´ is a snatch of an old jazz 78, begun and over just a moment later, as if someone pulled the tone arm off the record. ´Geometrie Der Liebe´ advances the story further, only now heartwarmth has turned to burgeoning despondance. There is no resolution, this is after all an art film, but ´Jardin Exotique´ is the perfect jungle to be swallowed up and disppear into.
http://www.monika-enterprise.de
Stephen Fruitman
