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Rating: "All D.a.f. records are great except perhaps the first one: it sounds like a band rehearsing".
This was the verdict of my trusted record store owner, but being a good completist fan, I didn't listen to him and ordered the debut of D.a.f. dated 1979 "Ein Produkt Der Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft", and I was right, very right. Indeed, the work is perhaps the least prized piece of their discography but only because it sounds a bit too raw, makeshift, and certainly not because of a lack of ideas. It is a self-produced record and very underground, so underground that the official singer, Gabi Delgado, didn't even participate in the recordings because he was busy with an unspecified love affair at the time.
A completely instrumental album then, composed of 22 short (some very short) untitled tracks with a total duration of just over half an hour. You can forget the more famous D.a.f., those of the duo "voice/drums+synth", this is entirely different music, this is a true band: Wolfgang Spelmans (guitar), Michael Kemner (bass), Chrislo Haas (bass, keyboard, saxophone), Robert Görl (drums, synth), all engaged in creating chaos and anarchy with instruments that often go "their own way" and aim to sound as abrasive and cacophonous as possible. The Teutonic response to No Wave one might say, also because despite all that punk fury, beneath all those grated guitars, stuttering bass lines, distorted synths etc. etc. you can recognize a certain rigor, a certain "mechanical" discipline (after all, we are in Düsseldorf, doesn't that remind you of anything?).
A criticism that can be made is that the music is "incomplete", indeed it feels like listening to unfinished tracks, ideas barely sketched and underdeveloped; on the other hand, the same Robert Görl, a conservatory graduate lent to post-punk, would later admit that the sole intent of this record was "to create new music" or "something that would kick the old music", consequently the feeling of "unfinished" is due precisely to the programmatic choice of doing research more than music. Many of the ideas present here will nonetheless have the chance to be developed in the more complete and successful "Die Kleinen Und Die Bösen", the second LP which will see the return of the charismatic singer of Spanish origin Delgado. Despite its flaws, "Ein Produkt.." remains a surprising and interesting record even more so if listened to today, in light of recent re-evaluations and revivals of No/New Wave and Industrial.
Tracklist
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