Album Review: Paul Kalkbrenner - Guten Tag

A little more than four years on from his star-making turn as both a musician and a thespian in Berlin Calling, Paul Kalkbrenner is far better known by reputation than his recent musical output. Acolytes hang off his every note, but returns since his breakout hit, Sky And Sand (co-penned with brother Fritz) have been mixed – if anything, 2011 long-player, Icke Wieder, was most memorable for its absence of much in the way of memorable tunes.

Whether recognising this or just in the midst of a purple patch, Kalkbrenner is back less than 18 months later with Guten Tag, his sixth longplayer. Perhaps as a way of circumventing the feeling that Icke Wieder was just a series of dancefloor tracks laid end-to-end rather than an album proper, Guten Tag's 17 tracks for the most part alternate between long-form techno excursions and quirky interludes. So you get eased in with the atmospheric Schnurbi, welcomed to the floor by the techno bounce of Der Stabsvörnern, led on a detour down sideshow alley with Kernspalte, pummelled by the bassline dirge of Spitz-Auge, and so on.

You can't help but think Kalkbrenner is hedging his bets with the shorter tracks, when Guten Tag may have been better served by exploring these ideas more deeply – the piano refrain of Fochleise-Kassette, for example, feels like an anthem looking for a song to call home. If it's a weekend weapon that people are looking for, though, the melodic chord stabs of Das Gezabel is where they'll find it.

Guten Tag sees Paul Kalkbrenner sounding a little undercooked;  polished and technically perfect, but stuck in a holding pattern; not quite accessible enough to convert non-believers, and perhaps not stretching quite far enough to please the old ones.