gudrun gut: wildlife

Gudrun Gut goes "back to nature" on her first album release since her outings with the Greie Gut Fraktion in 2009. However, Wildlife does not portray nature as a cosy ur-idyll, but rather as a realm filled with rough tenderness and its very own dangers. Gudrun Gut -- in her guise as Berlin post-punk activist, label owner, radio presenter or party promoter -- has always been interested in gaps, niches and risky locations. Now, nature itself provides such a small and utopian niche; a place where "it" might happen in a very existential sense. All of the album's tracks took shape in Gudrun Gut's Uckermark hideaway, an hour or two away from Berlin. During production, in autumn and winter, this landscape exudes an almost eerie calm, suggesting that the outside world's hectic universe of data and projects is no more than a figment of our collective imagination. Far removed from hippie-esque humanism, Gut's natural states are much closer in spirit to the cool knowledge of punk and its successors. With the sangfroid and serenity of three decades of active music experience, between completely ingenious and utter dilettante, Gut now ventures into a lavishly proliferating world of sounds and references. While the opener "Protecting My Wildlife" confronts us with jarring post-techno minimalism, "Garten" soothes the ear with its shuffling, electric romance. Soon enough, however, well-trodden paths are left behind: Gut's reworking of "Simply the Best" turns this hackneyed mega-hit into a staggering love ballad; a streaky guitar adds further distortion. "How Can I Move" seems to hide a trace of Armand van Helden in the underbrush; "Mond" flirts with subtle Detroit techno allusions. The distinctly dark "Tiger," on the other hand, truly does sound like a veritable tiger leap into the past. Similarly free of nostalgia, "Erinnerung" looks back to the past with a string of words created in a lyrical back-and-forth ping-pong match between Gut and author Annika Reich. All tracks were mixed together with Jörg Burger at two studios in the East and West. Time and again, the album exudes a lascivious and demanding intimacy that comes into its own on the fantastic "Frei Sein." Here, the track turns a nursery rhyme's playful naivety into an idiosyncratic anthem with African-inspired rhythms and a clicking, animist, ambient sound. "Frei Sein," i.e. being free, is what Gudrun Gut is all about.

Gudrun Gut - Wildlife