Staubgold

The title says it all.  Point, spot, period, German play on words, or English slang, it fits each way.  Every song on here references pointed, popular punk ideology and stylization, and every one makes me feel like I’ve been tricked into listening. 

Sold as a collection of Ziegler’s “greatest hits,” Punkt actually compiles the artist’s earliest releases, most of them basement issue cassettes that probably go back to his youth.  Having known Ziegler only from his work with Sack und Blumm, Mouse on Mars, and as a figurehead in the A-musik scene, I feel mislead by the presentation of this record: I want timeless naïve pop ambient; I want the ancient bedroom tapes with Ziegler mixing street noise and naked harmonium drones for the first time; I want the childhood inspirations for Sack und Blumm’s toy world.  I do not want songs like “Barbie & Ken” and “Teenage Lover,” sounding like Royal Trux 20 years back with no drugs, no “singing” voice, and raised on German television. 

Punkt is 22 lo-fi punkish pop tunes executed by a one-man-band with a predictably keen melodic sense and the necessary exuberance; it’s just not close to the Zeigler I know and that’s disappointing.  Staubgold’s last release of this nature, a collection from faceless German pop recluse Die Welttraumforscher, was a brilliant and literal borrowing from Felix Kubin’s (Gagarin Records’) back-catalog, as well as a successful fusion of the unknown, always quirky German pop landscape and the contemporary electronic scene peopled by the likes of Barbara Morgenstern, Mouse on Mars, etc.  Punkt might’ve benefited similarly, from an extra disc of remixes, or even a redux by Ziegler alone.  As it is, these songs are inspiring and revolting in equal and simultaneous doses; nowhere is the otherworldlyness or the subtle nostalgic currents touching ‘Sack’’s subsequent work.  Here is the playful punker kid in everyone, only it might be more engaging if it were just anyone.

samples:

• Barbie Hymne
• Teenage Lover
• Aquarium