Number 3 of 2003 — Toktok vs. Soffy O

Twenty two years after the formation of seminal Detroit group Cybotron, which provided the first home for the recordings of techno godfather Juan Atkins.

Twenty one years after the release of Dare! by the Human League.

We have with this album something which finally brings all of these different facets of the same genre fusing together into one captivating package.

We’re talking 2002. The biographies of Toktok and Soffy O are somewhat difficult to ascertain. Primarily because all that I can find is written in German. Or you can cheat and read the reviews at Amazon. Toktok started life in Berlin in 1993 inspired by the hardcore Spiral Tribe collective of the UK. Made up of Benjamin Weiss and Fabian Feyerabendt, they spent many years making punk electronica for illegal raves and releasing endless amounts of vinyl, notably on Ellen Allien’s BPitch Control label. Soffy O (Sophia Larsson Ocklind) moved from Sweden to Berlin in 1999 and joined with Toktok for live shows and to flesh out the otherwise vocal free music. Ultimately signed to East-West, this debut album was released in October 2002.

The overriding feel of this album is simultaneously playful and serious (listen to the lyrics). There’s a minimalism to each track. Using the barest instrumentation required to carry each song exposes the mastery of their songwriting. The second track Neighbour with its sparse analog strings which blossom into a chorus with addition of one simple buzzing pad line. Genius. I cannot really hope to convey this in this review. You just have to hear the album.

Jean is seems to be some bizarre pastiche of Hazell Dean and Dead or Alive, revolving around a filtered loop, a barely there keyboard rhythm section all for a song about a pair of jeans. Soffy O’s vocals throughout the album fit into the classic electroclash mould of slightly disinterested, sleepy, sexy vocals, except in this case, she can really sing.

Things get dark on Go, a lower than low bassline and crisp clinically clear percussion and synth effects. But these then drop out for a the introduction of a divine monophonic melody. The vocals come in, together with more monophonic leads or chorus lines and I’m holding up my TUNE placard. Incredible. Siamese Twins continues the darkness with a more atonal feel.

Club hit Missy Queen’s Gonna Die has an octave jumping bassline which leads up to the chorus and the gradual introduction of more and more percussion. Experience the classic delay between the key change on the vocal and the backing track. Sublime.

I wrote about songwriting earlier. Changes has a chorus which would be fine elsewhere, but there’s the addition of a Casio or D50 string line and everything is lifted a hundred fold. Follow this with a look at The Lookalikes – “we all look the same, we’re all lookalikes”, with its “don’t wanna be ignored at the door” take on club life and its inevitable boredom “we just wanna go home, so bored, so bored, so bored”. Deconstruct or dive into the mechanics of the song and you’ll find it consists primarily of a bouncing bassline, ancient synth horns, percussion and that damn glorious string pad again – albeit this time in chords! This is so mindbendingly beautiful.

Sixpack and Talkative appear to be Cabaret Voltaire covers, such is the similarity with the Sheffield duo. But they serve as useful reminders of how far music has come in the last twenty eight years. Even if sounds just the same as it did back then. It’s at once innovative yet retro. One Of These Places demonstrates this by effortlessly moving into deep house territory and then back out again.

So there are the highlights. There is one fly in the ointment. The final track A Pointless Life appears to be a studio reworking of what feels to be a live track. Whilst I have no doubt that this speed punk workout would be great live, it doesn’t work on the album. That said, there’s no other album of 2003 that hit me with its majesty as immediately as this one did.