EP Review: Berlin Taxi – Contract

If Noel Fielding was a band … From the first fat, throbbing bass note and cheesy analogue-y arpeggiated riff, the Contract EP‘s opening track Everybody Changes is immediately evocative of grainy post-punk videos populated by the eerily swaying, self-absorbed, pallid and hollow-cheeked denizens of Leipzig’s shadiest synthpop disco, circa 1982. This vibe is not dispelled by any of the subsequent four tracks, which are wholly synthetic and unnervingly overlaid by what seems to be a studied facsimile of Dave Gahan‘s voice. Doubly odd then that this electro-fest hails from New Orleans’ Michael Arruebarrena whose pedigree is ‘garage rock, psychedelia and new wave’. That’s quite a stretch.

Inspired by travel in Europe with bandmate Morgan McManus, the Contract EP is an homage to a particular era of electronic music that is likely past, or so deeply underground that it cannot be easily seen any more. It’s hard to tell from its cold shell if this is an affectionate stance or a serious attempt to make wobbly Casio tones and one finger noodling cool again. Even the band name – Berlin Taxi – evokes a kind of dismal anachronistic Europa that in its day had a distinctive Cold War charm, but doesn’t any longer.

That’s not to say that there isn’t anything to enjoy in this EP. In its studious reproduction of a bygone time’s new thing, there is clearly plenty of musical intelligence at work. There are moments of quite unexpected beauty as well as what can only be deliberately odd and disconcerting dissonance. Overall though, and without any context, the exercise could easily be passed off as some newly-discovered Depeche Mode outtakes. There must be clubs where the pale, 40-something souls disenfranchised by Emo go to bleakly admire each other’s trenchcoats and wistfully smoke black cigarettes and listen to this. And Covenant. And Noel Fielding‘s band, Loose Tapestries.

Berlin Taxi‘s debut EP, Contract, is set to be released on April 12, 2019