Posts Tagged ‘Haujobb’

Listen: ‘In the Headlights’ by Haujobb

Posted: 4 July 2024 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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German electro-industrial mainstays Haujobb have just dropped the sinister sounding retro-futuristic slo-mo banger ‘In The Headlights’ as the first single from their forthcoming new album, The Machine In The Ghost. Scheduled for release on 20th September, it is the 10th full length record by the Prague-based group, which formed in 1992 and has existed as the duo of Daniel Myer (vocals/programming) and Dejan Samardzic (programming) since the mid-‘90s.

“’In The Headlights’ was actually one of the first tracks written for the album,” explains Myer. "Dejan recorded and sampled his exhaust hood, which kind of sounds like a jet engine, and we built the song around that sample. There is also a sound that might be identified as a tambourine, which is really just a key chain dropping onto the floor. This and other physical constructions that are sampled throughout the album act as relics of interfaces between man and machine.”

Maintaining an impressive penchant for refusing to do the same thing twice on each studio album, The Machine In The Ghost deploys field recordings to create some of its most prominent sounds. In order to achieve the desired effect, the duo used a mix of software and hardware in the shape of everyday items. This deliberate nod to a previous era with more analogue shifting of the dials complements the retro theme of The Machine In The Ghost (albeit without indulging in nostalgia for its own sake), the album revolving around the highly charged relationship between mind and matter, analogue and digital.

Despite their constant artistic evolution, a unique musical handwriting is present throughout the Haujobb catalogue. Originally founded as a trio in the West German city of Bielefeld, they were initially influenced by the ‘Vancouver school’ of industrial electronics (the likes of Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly), but it did not take long for them to be recognised as figureheads of a more modern take on this sound that incorporated elements of IDM (intelligent dance music) that helped catapult them onto the wider international scene.

Co-founding member Björn Jünemann left the band after their second album, with Myer and Samardzic subsequently releasing the acclaimed ‘Solutions For A Small Planet’ (1996) and thereafter maintaining a strong strike-rate that has included New World March (2011), their 7th record and regarded as another milestone effort.
 The Machine in the Ghost has seen Haujobb begin another exciting chapter in their career. As we enter the next industrial and creative revolution that has been ignited by the rise of AI, it shows that they still have their musical fingers on the pulse.

Listen to ‘In the Headlights’ here:

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Haujobb – Alive

Posted: 29 March 2018 in Albums
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Metropolis Records – 6th April 2018

Christopher Nosnibor

However much music you know, there’s always a near-infinite realm beyond your ken. Until now, German electronic crossover act Haujobb – a hybrid of electro, noise, IDM and techno, who lean toward the more mainstream electro-industrial sphere – have existed beyond my range of awareness. I can’t imagine why.

I would rarely recommend a live album by way of an introduction to any band, but then again, it was by listening to Concert that I found the motivation to explore The Cure in more detail, and it was Welcome to Mexico… which compelled me to listen to releases beyond Gub.

So, we’re presented here with ‘a career-spanning collection of the band’s most beloved songs, recorded at various recent concerts throughout Europe’, which, according to the blurb, ‘stands as a testament to the band’s live prowess and unique creativity’.

They’ve produced a vast body of work over the course of their 25-years existence, and Alive gathers 15 cuts from across it, opening with the slow-building ‘Machine Drum’. Lifted from 2011’s New World March, it’s brooding, dark, and angry. But – overlooking the absence of audience noise, which on one hand can interfere with the listening experience, but by the same token is also pretty much integral to the live experience, and I always eye (metaphorically) a live album with no audience noise suspiciously – the question of how representative it all is encroaches on the enjoyment of such a release. And sequencing matters: is this live collection in any way representative of the actual live experience? I suspect not. The sound quality is pretty consistent given that it’s a compilation culled from various shows, but then again, the slickness and uniformity mean it doesn’t feel very ‘live’, and equally, with so much of the instrumentation sequenced and preprogrammed, meaning that it’s a little hard, perhaps, to convey the band’s live prowess.

‘Renegades of Noise’ – and a fair few others, if truth be told – sounds like a Depeche Move studio offcut, as remixed by RevCo. Elsewhere, ‘Input Error’ is driven by a clanking industrial beat and a bucketload of aggression and anguish. As on ‘Let’s Drop Bombs’, The anger is palpable, while electronic stabs rain in like gunfire from every angle near the end. And while Haujobb occupy well-trodden territory, the semi-familiarity of the structures and delivery doesn’t undermine the fact they’ve got some strong songs and a mastery of driving beats and hypnotically looping sequenced grooves. In all… it’s not bad.

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