Chris Imler Operation Schönheit

Chris Imler likes to play drums standing up. He‘s the dandy with the killer offbeat, or, as
one major German newspaper once put it, the "Grand Seigneur of the Berlin
Underground". He has been making his mark on countless Berlin musical affairs since long
before the fall of the Wall, with The Golden Showers, Peaches, Oum Shatt, Driver
&Driver, Die Türen, Jens Friebe, to name but a few. He has also been perfoming across
Europe as a solo artist for the past decade.
In "Operation Schönheit" (German for "Operation Beauty"), he has recorded his most,
well, beautiful album to date. But Benedikt Frey's warm production subverts its own
beauty with a multitude of clanking and ingling synth sounds, making the work very much
about the cosmetic surgery it performs on itself. It's all in the tradition of the more
experimental and electronic side of post-punk in which Imler and his unique groove are
rooted. It doesn't take insider knowledge of Berlin's post-punk underground to realise that
that Imler groove consists of rhythm that sings, vocals that dance and a look that fits, as
illustrated by "Disappoint Me", his latest video: https://youtu.be/YeVJ75ljjB8
Elsewhere - such as in "Movies" - the rhythm sings, less electronically reduced, into the
acoustics of an old, high-ceilinged Berlin apartment; metal clatters, a zither trembles and
Imler plays with the metronome. Sometimes he moves ahead of time, sometimes trails
behind it. He always manages to be in his very own groove, which carries everything
along. And this is precisely the essence of the Imler rhythm, which lends itself to being
applied to the very rhythm of life: Stretch and compress your time and loop it according to
your own groove! Optimise nothing but feel everything! And dance to it! Even when
contemplating everyday information overload, as Imler's high-speed mumbling suggests in
the hectic yet smooth opening track "Temperature".
But being the ultimate night owl he is, Imler manages to make even the odd bout of
paranoia seem like a good thing: like some kind of krauty, groovy B-horror-soundtrackinflected high-pressure environment, "Whip Me" is a cross between Conrad Schnitzler
and Bauhaus. In the title track, whose lyrics were written together with Jens Friebe, he
intones: "You want to be something greater / You break your leg / When it heals again /
You break it again" and sounds like the most gleeful fatalist you can imagine.
Because in his city, one can still lose oneself better than anywhere else - a night easily
becomes a whole universe that can be traversed, marvelled at and played with, and one
might find one's old self again only when hearing "church bells" and "small birds singing".

Markus Göres, Fun In The Church, Erich-Weinert-Str. 57, 10439 Berlin
markus@funinthechurch.com, Tel.: +49 (0)30 39838155, +49-(0)-177-7535745, www.funinthechurch.com
At least that's how Imler illustrates it in "Emptiness full of stars", and it seems likely that
those "stars" are the human companions of the Berlin night in question.
And so once again Imler becomes Berlin's most important cultural ambassador: that scene
of the eternally, and somehow successfully, failing creatures of the night, once the envy of
the international postmodern bohème, has, despite many claims to the contrary, not been
completely "optimised away", and its attitude to life is perfectly summed up in Imler's
groove. And, of course, his look. "Schau Hin" (German for "Look!") , he sings in the track
of the same name, masterfully dubbed out with the help of Melbourne's Leo James.
Quite right! Look - and listen.
Yours, Johannes von Weizsäcker (The Chap)