Gudrun Gut
I Put A Record On ••••½
Monika

For someone who has been recording, producing and churning out remixes for 20 years or so, and whose eclectic CV includes founding the art-rock band Malaria!, multimedia art collaborations, film scores, DJ work and heading up two labels (Monika Enterprise and Moabit Music), it's remarkable that I Put A Record On marks Gudrun Gut's debut album proper. As the Monika Enterprise website states, "Gut promotes unconventional attitude," and that could equally serve as the tagline for the record. It's a culmination of those life experiences, a mass of samples, sounds and styles all linked by a downtempo electro beat.

Like a soundtrack to Darren Aronofsky's beautiful but troubling ‘Requiem For A Dream', we follow Gut's moods, transient states that she cannot seem to hold for even one entire track. Ever restless and easily bored, she might fade out to a finger-picked acoustic guitar or the bustle of the traffic rolling by her window. Opening with her 2005 single ‘Move Me', Gut takes us on a waltz through the alleyways of Berlin's Latin quarter dressed as the Gotan Project's gothic cousin. The rhythmic pulses and the repetitive breathy whisper of the title set the bar high for the rest of the album. And Gut is never disappointing as she leads us across a late-night urban landscape, ‘The Land' providing pitch-perfect driving music. Rhythmic slices of sound splatter the windshield like rain as her progressive electro takes us into clubland.

It's here that the party really gets going. The trance of ‘Cry Easy' is a deeply sexy treat that you can be immersed in completely; "you make me want you, and I can't resist / it comes from the inside, it's in the flesh" - Gut says ‘flesh' like her tongue is in your ear. The club trend then continues with the dirty funk and grind of ‘Girlboogie 6' followed by the cocky strut of ‘Blatterwald', before Gut brings it down with some early morning introspection in ‘Rock Bottom Riser' and ‘Last Night', the latter of which sees her confessing that "it all went wrong", "I was out of my head", yet the bluesy guitar lick makes this seem like a good thing.

Now we're moving into after-after-party music; right before the dawn, as Bob Dylan once said. The fairground-style waltzing sample of ‘Sweet' tumbles into a hypnotic state where the beat hovers like an afterthought at the back of your mind before kicking back in one last time. Then there's ‘Pleasuretrain', the standout track. A Coltrane homage for the 21st Century, it combines all the best bits of what Gut has to offer: broken blues riffs, whispered vocals, rippling samples and a progressive, downtempo beat. Gut then flirts with pop for ‘The Wheel', but at a safe distance. The same techno fuzz is still at large, but her spoken voice is joined for an almost radio-friendly swelling chorus with broken string samples.

Ultimately, Gudrun Gut's music vividly recreates a recognisable contemporary world of highs and lows, a place where pleasure can be ripped from you suddenly, like the cable to your earphones being wrested from the amp. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than album closer ‘Tip Tip'. Beginning with simple, open piano chords, it quickly grows euphoric in a Radiohead sense of the word, with rising samples and fragmented voices underpinned by a strong central melody. But she'll only provide the "tip tip on your belly". Never complete satisfaction. Life isn't as simple as that. You have to work for it. And Gudrun makes the effort worthwhile.

James M Johnston
UK release date: 24/03/08

The Insider is a recurring profile of emerging tastemakers in the fields of fashion, design, food, travel and the arts. Here Stuart Comer, curator of film for the Tate Modern, shares a few of his stylish essentials. Comer recently kicked off the season with a multimedia soiree featuring the projections of Nan Goldin's "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency," accompanied by live performances from the indie-favorite Patrick Wolf and the performance artist John Kelly. Coming up, Comer will present a major survey of video work from the composer Tony Conrad (and host a live performance by him on June 14th) and a new film from the artist Stephen Prina on June 21st.

Name: Stuart Comer
Age: 39
Occupation: Curator of Film, Tate Modern.
Home base: London.
Retail standby: Dover Street Market.
Music venue: Volksbühne Berlin.
Favorite concert: My Bloody Valentine plays the Roundhouse on June 20th, which is eclipsing the memory of anything I might have seen in recent months.
Music: Gudrun Gut.
Provisions: Black coffee before noon; green tea for the rest of the day.
For gifts: Conor Donlon Books.
Restaurant: St. John; Rochelle Canteen for lunch.
Drink: Red wine or tequila.
Party central: All roads eventually lead to The Joiners Arms.
Momentary style obsessions: I have forsaken four-letter fashion and seem to be revisiting three-letter options, i.e., A.P.C.
Reading material: "Yoshimasa and the Silver Pavilion" by Donald Keene.
Art pick: The Whitney's Paul McCarthy / Bucky Fuller summer double-date.
Museums: Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford.
Movie: Chantal Akerman's "Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles." It's finally available on DVD!
Vacation destination: Istanbul.
Something you are looking forward to for summer: The Temenos.

Stuart's London Neighborhood
Here are some of Comer's favorite spots near London that he visits almost daily. The map below is interactive; click on the blue markers to learn more about Stuart's spots.

[googlemaps http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&s=AARTsJqWEBstqDMFXu6UxdVTeq2LQc4z5Q&msa=0&msid=103739794770934605257.00044e3c1996e482b75d7&ll=51.517503,-0.077248&spn=0.034717,0.068665&z=13&output=embed&w=400&h=325]

• I left East London three weeks ago and I am still getting my bearings in
  SE1, but I now find myself compelled to eat almost every breakfast at
  El Vergel.
• Monmouth Coffee in Borough Market has been a long-standing addiction.
• Walking across the Millenium Bridge for lunch at Sweetings is an unparalleled pleasure.
• Konditor & Cook's Boston brownies could and should solve the world's problems.
• The gravitational pull of the George & Dragon and Bistrotheque mean that I have not fully relinquished my East London leanings.

Malaria! mit Frontfrau Gundrun Gut. Super-8-Film zum Kult-Song "Your turn to run" aus den 80er Jahren. Japp - kaum zu glauben, es gab mal eine Zeit ohne Digi-Camcorder und Internet...

Gudrun Gut ist übrigens immer noch aktiv unterwegs. Wer mehr wissen will, nimmt die Maus in die Hand und macht... klicke-di-klack.

"Your turn to run" (Dieter Hormel & Brigitte Bühleraus & Gudrun Gut, 1983)