Camera: Five Go To Motorik

13th October 2018

Title: Emotional Detox

Label: Bureau B

The fourth album from the Berlin-based combo, Camera. The band released one LP as a duo, one as a trio but this one is a quintet: Steffen Kahles, Michael Drummer (the core the of the group and the only ever-present), Michel Collet, Andreas Miranda and Timm Brockmann (back after a 2014 flight).

Camera: Five Go To Motorik

The album begins with Gizmo, a motorik-based beat that is high in pace and flecked with Joe Meek-like synths to add a sepia tinge. Patrouille continues the motorik theme but deadens the variation, reducing the track to a meditative and rhythmic and rather serious noodling psychedelia while Ciao Cacao is almost ethereal in comparison with its 80s indie guitar sounds but it retains the repetition, the driving forward, the sense of movement which is an underlying theme in this album.

Camera: Five Go To Motorik

It’s only when we get to Himmelhilf that there is some sense of variation here, sporting spacey synth noises and a more complex drum pattern and an almost Vangelis-like grandeur pervading the rear of the soundstage. Yet, even here, the rhythmic beat falls quickly into place, taking its time to settle into regular motion.

https://soundcloud.com/bureau-1/camera-ciao-cacao-snippet

Upon arriving at the song, Pacific One that the band decide to lower their mechanical, faceless, industrial front and inject a sense of emotion into their music. Full of minor key changes, its an effecting track that, bizarrely, is made more effective because of what has come before it. The contrast is almost heart breaking.  

Camera: Five Go To Motorik

Generally, mastering is decent with no obvious nasty frequencies to alarm the ear. You’ll be able to focus on the music with this release.

https://soundcloud.com/bureau-1/camera-himmelhilf-snippet

Instrumental in approach, this is a quite superb album from Camera that is immensely subtle in how it applies sonic textures and mini variation to effect change in movement and rhythm. 

https://soundcloud.com/bureau-1/camera-cosm-snippet

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