BRÜCKEN FROESE

Propaganda/Tangerine Dream collaboration bears fruit.

Although she has intermittently reunited with icy German synth-pop noirists Propaganda, the band that first made her famous, Claudia Brücken has since kept busy by collaborating with several different musical partners, as well as forging a solo career. This hook-up with Jerome Froese (former member of electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream, alongside his late father Edgar) is definitely one of the more interesting projects she’s put her name to, even if it’s closer to the avant-pop blueprint she was first known for than TD’s ambient electronic dreamscapes. (The) Last Dance is decorated with rainy streaks of synth as Brücken sings a resigned lament with a weary elegance. Wounded’s aquatic keyboard motif is similarly alluring, and then the sonic textures cloud over as she admits, ‘For your crime

I am paying, like a prisoner I’m serving my time,’ before emerging back out into daylight. The furious tempo, techno bleepscape and austere dystopian spoken vocal on Sweet Sense (of) Liberation (why all the brackets?) may be a touch too 1984 throwback for comfort, but the lush, lullabyish dreampop of Forevermore could seduce even the dourest of techno puritans. Js