DAF – Alles Ist Gut (1981) – LITTLE LOST CLASSICS

DAF or DAF (Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft) is part of the scene that became known as neue deutsche welle, something like the German new wave, which also served as umbrellas for similar ones like Neubauten and others not so much like Nena and Trio. That is history, as is the fact that Gabi Delgado and Robert Görl were pioneers of industrial music and all its tentacles and also that they were the first artists to release an album on Mute Records.

What history overlooks is that it itself relegates DAF to oblivion, at least outside the ghettos made up of music junkies, where ‘everybody’ quotes Blixa Bargeld even though Delgado and Görl got to acetate first. Anyway, just another complaint from a boring old man.

When I decided on one of DAF’s albums to be released here, I was in doubt between the duo’s apocalyptic debut (A product of the German-American Friendship, de 79) e The little ones and the bad guys (the aforementioned Mute debut), which came out the following year and acted as a bridge between the experimental chaos of the early years and what they did later. So I decided to go for it afterwards.

But here comes another question: gold and love or All is well, both from 1981? I decided on the cover with Gabi Delgado posing sweaty after sex (just kidding. Or maybe not hahaha).

So, I opted for All is well – besides the cover and among other things – because it is, in a very improbable and incredibly surreal way, the album that contains the great DAF hit, “Der Mussolini”, which puts the aforementioned facho, his partner Adolf Hitler and Jesus in a unthinkable sensual fervor to become successful. But what are probabilities, right? (At one of those weird synapses I remembered the story of Murder Ballads, by Nicolas Cavernoso).

Well, more than making him go down to the ground (hysterical laughter) with the three characters from “Der Mussolini” – which clearly ‘inspired’ “Some velvet morning” in the Primal Scream version) – All is well it is, in short, one of the pillars on which EBM was built. Darker and more tense than its 1981 sibling, but just as danceable, the album is built around heavy, minimalist beats accompanied by synth lines and ditto bass; Add in the ultra-macho vocals (more laughs) and you have the formula that gave rise to Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, A Split Second and influenced so many others like Vitalic and DJ Hell.

If you are not familiar with DAF, I recommend that you start here and then go back a few houses until the beginning of everything. One of these days I’ll be back here to talk about, who knows, the 22 unnamed tracks from his debut. Or when they came out as pop, recorded in English and opened up the naughty thing to then fade away.

For today, I recommend turning up the volume and listening All is well no felling

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