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Rating: CD3- Freiheit fuer die sklaven (1987)
CD2- Gisela (1989)
CD5- Single (69sixtynine69/warm leatherette/i'm lost, little girl/the bonus track) (1990)
CD4- Omne animal triste post coitum (1990)
CD1- Treue hunde (1992)
Marvelous!
Pankow, not just one of the historic districts of Berlin, but rather the most lucid, anarchically corrosive, energetically experimental musical entity (etc. etc. shall I continue?) ever miraculously expressed by the bleak yet murky and intricate electro-industrial (Contempo)European underworld.
The newly (re)structured "Art of the Gentle Revolution" (re)assembles, thanks to the worthy work of Mr. Favati, into a unique and robust, spectacular and boxy multi-CD (including a pamphlet/booklet narrating vicissitudes and/or assorted pleasantries of the "miracle" Pankow), part of the indispensable complete works issued over the years by the ex-expatriate Sir Alex Spalck and the electro-recalcitrant company.
This is specifically a reissue of the first (overwhelming, almost unrepeatable) and five-year part of Pankow's career: an enjoyable opportunity to (re)savor the blistering, non-aligned compositions contained in the daring and propulsive "enslaving" debut [CD 3]; as an example, listen carefully to how they still sound astonishingly current and biting, the amazing "Sickness Takin Over," "Nice Bottom," or the same hyper-whirling/thumping title track: dazzling and razor-sharp snippets of sound, of a heterogeneous dub/digital-frontality (not monolithic) "simply" impressive: notably one of the most visionary (and successful, naturally) albums ever appreciated in this field.
In the caustic batch, one has the chance to (re)traverse the icy and (only sporadically) less uncompromising sharp deviations and acoustic trajectories (by the way: spectacular "Warm Leatherette"), of the chronologically subsequent [CD 2], work that in fact represented the peak of visibility (published throughout Europe and the United States) for Favati & Co.: traveling around, thus metaphorically setting stages and clubs ablaze across half the globe over the next year and a half. Testimony of this stage presence is the assembled "live" work [CD 4], included here: a carnal frontality, variety, and unchanged, if not at times thickened, painful impact, nearly unattainable in this type of sound and performance dimension.
Beyond the very hard-to-find tracks now contained in [CD 5] (the unreleased tracks of the marble-like as well as luxurious version of "Gisela"), we find the chronologically symboled [CD 1], epitaph of the first (turbulent) part of the career: certainly (and by the group's own admission) the least successful work; a work quite technically pretentious: given the unchanged roots, the search for an improbably more substantial underlying accessibility, intriguing aurally only in a really episodic way and heralding the first Pankow-separation, which occurred just a few months after its release.
Retracing the tracks contained in the monumental digital work evokes a miserable yet banal marginal thought: it remains incomprehensibly paradoxical that despite a certain "gate opening" at a planetary level of the genre in question, accompanied moreover by a certain trivialization and sterilization of similar sound concepts (from which "our" group, fortunately, kept well away) and given the stellar level reached already starting from the first EBM monument, to this day, though still in sporadic but more than solid activity (and some less refined more recent works), Pankow today appear almost a handful of semi-unknowns (especially and significantly within the national borders) or almost obscured outside the close circle of electro (vet)enthusiasts.
Thus/therefore, an excellent and substantial opportunity to bestow Them the so far unjustified scant attention given and to reflect (possibly) and fully appreciate this small (not so small) forward-looking and powerful fragment of tricolor musical history.
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