PYROLATOR

The musician Kurt Dahlke is not only a member of the bands Der Plan and Fehlfarben, founding member of the group DAF and co-founder of the label Ata Tak, he has also released a stellar line of solo works under the name Pyrolator for which he enjoys great critical acclaim. What began in 1979 with the first release "Inland" continues it's lineal thread with new work "Niemandsland" – the sixth album within the Land series.

It was 1979, some 43 years ago, when Pyrolator released Inland, an instrumental protest album, as he liked to think of it. Autumnal protests against nuclear weapon stations, against the entire structures of the war generation, but without the pathos of the rebellious songs which soundtracked the 1968 movement. Apart from a few samples, there were no words at all.

Now, more than four decades later, Kurt Dahlke alias Pyrolator returns to his origins. But not, this time, in protest: "The clock already stands at ten past midnight and we have arrived in no man's land. Neither the student movement nor the rejectionist stance of punk changed anything. Avarice has emerged victorious and no future is nothing more than an empty cliché. This is what global reality looks like. The principle of cause and effect."

This is also a back to the roots story for Pyrolator in the musical sense. Niemandsland was created exclusively with modular synthesizers, the computer merely a recording device. All of the tracks were played live and direct – neither storable nor replicable.

The sixth album in Pyrolator's Land series is more than just a bridge to the past and the music to be found there. It has a formal language all of its own, meandering between the beauty of crystal clear melodies and restrained ambient moments on the one hand and rugged, dystopian brittleness on the other. A cycle revolving between the hope of a revolution for humanity and arrival in no man's land.

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