« Jazzcat's Discoveries »: [GIGOLO32] Dopplereffekt

Alright, in for some pioneering though very inorganic music?

"Dopplereffekt are one of the more mysterious units of the contemporary electronic music scene. There are no interviews and hardly any live appearances. The composers hide behind strange German pseudonyms whereas the song titles and lyrics are in English and make up a strange mixture of scientific, sexually explicit and political allusions. "

"The main member during all periods has probably been producer/ artist Gerald Donald alias "Rudolf Klorzeiger". Donald is generally believed to be also the author of the acts Heinrich Müller/ Der Zyklus, Japanese Telecom and Arpanet as well as one half of the band Drexciya until 1997. During that period the sound of these two acts showed strong similarities, and alongside other Detroit based acts on the labels Underground Resistance and direct beat they were highly influental in the 90s' revival of electro. The 1999 compilation of all Dopplereffekt releases from this period, Gesamtkunstwerk, depicted Donald with a new member, "To Nhan Le Thi", who most likely had not been involved with the old material but was given credit anyway and who has been a steady and visible member since, giving occasional live performances.

This second period of the band, very contrary to the mid-1990s releases, has been characterised by what sounds like mostly digital sound synthesis and processing, the implication of a connection of the band's music composition to contemporary physics research via track titles and sleeve artworks, and often times the absence of danceable drum rhythms and / or tonality, hence resembling Contemporary classical music styles, especially musique concrete and early pioneers of electronic music with analogue modular music systems / synthesizers. However, the compositions are still mostly based on short sequenced riffs/ loops, and the instrumentation is often still based on the traditional scheme "drums + bass + main riff + background synth pads". These traits (free form in some aspects, pop music tradition in others) are contradictory from a mainstream point of view, but are acceptable in the context of the ambient genre or film music.

There are no known interviews of Donald or other members concerning Dopplereffekt at this time, except for a feature in the October 2009 issue of new music magazine The Wire, containing exchanges with two people purporting to be associated with the group."