Tarwater: Animals, Suns & Atoms
Kodwo Eshun, The Wire, June 2000
ANIMALS, SUNS & Atoms, Tarwater's third and best album, fascinates for several reasons Initially, it's drummer/singer/producer Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram's singular Anglophilia. Songs such as 'AIl Of The Ants Left Paris' and 'Seven Ways To Fake A Perfect Skin' feature a wintry Sprechgesange, an arch, mannered speak-sing enunciation that conjures a trace memory of early/mid-80s Cherry Red/Factory-era synthetic Anglo hauteur. They're not so much songs as diary excerpts labyrinthine vignettes through which figures move with a fatalistic self-awareness.
Total word count of piece: 507
