Thomas Brinkmann - 'Axel/Bernd' (Ernst)

Oh yeah, this is why I hate techno - cause it sucks! 'Axel' begins with a streak of white noise that continues over a beat, creating a Tron-type of universe that's probably fun to dance do if you're zonked out of your mind on some shitty pills, but pretty boring to listen to at home. The second half of 'Axel' is the same beat with the white noise pulled back, so there's a little more space to bounce around, but it still does nothing for me. I like music that celebrates humanity, and the sparse, more clicky-based Brinkmann stuff somehow does that through it's repetition and negative space. But this stuff is just like listening to a computer jacking off. Now 'Bernd' is a little better but still too active for my tastes , with the beats all flanged out and jittery. I don't know why this 12" has male names and not female ones; maybe this is the reason for my dislike of it, since it's not really all that different from the female records. I should also take this point to comment on how amazingly strange the surfaces of these LPs look - I don't know if they were cut to have all of these patterns in them, or if that's just an inevitable product of having such repeitive music. But they look awesome and sometimes my tonearm slides all over the place while playing them, making me wonder if this is even a good idea. So cheers for that, Thomas - the flourishes, design-wise, are in the details of the grooves and not in the packaging.