KOMPUTER SYNTHETIK ALBUM MUTE, EMI RELEASE: JUNE 27, 2007 REVIEW: AUGUST 15, 2007

Believe what you have heard. "Synthetik", the new Komputer album, is indeed a step back to Kraftwerkian territories. The abstract, minimalistically stale electronica of "Market Led" has been brushed aside for now, but traces of it are still present on this, the third disc from the British duo of David Baker and Simon Leonard.

These two gentlemen gave the world lots of electronic goodies while working under the I Start Counting moniker in the eighties and early nineties. Then, for reasons unknown, they squandered their talent in the unfocused Fortran 5 project before founding Komputer in 1996. The hefty Kraftwerk complex on their debut "World of Tomorrow" was as evident as it was lovingly nurtured. This is again displayed through the gorgeous opening piece on "Synthetik", "International Space Station", bearing a striking resemblance to the atmospheric "Europe Endless" off the "Trans Europe Express" album. Things wander back into glitch and click-land on "Breathing" and "Synthetik", experimenting with voices and effects well beyond the point of exaggeration. Not bad, but annoyingly bland. Pop structures re-enter, only to be replaced yet again with electronic mumbo jumbo not worthy of the minds of Baker och Leonard.

"Synthetik", then, is both "World of Tomorrow" and "Market Led" in one, making it a bit hard to swallow in its scattered entirety. Komputer are no doubt on their way back to more coherent and homogenised song structures, but it might take them a while to fully drop the mindless drivel present in some of the songs.

NIKLAS FORSBERG