If you have only a few bucks to add some delicious German funk to your collection and are tempted to shell out for the recent Funky Fräuleins on the strength of its amazing bodypaint cover, hold on there a sec. That’s not the one you want. Track down instead the less colorfully decorated but infinitely more satisfying D-Funk compilation from the good folks at Marina (responsible years ago for Peter Thomas’s Moonflowers and Miniskirts, which you also need).
By now only a clueless shut-in would dare joke about the oxymoronic nature of “German funk.” Sure, we all know about the towering influence of Italo-kraut Giorgio Moroder and his Munich sound, and even Kanye lets it slip that he’s down with Can, but this CD goes way deeper.
How deep? Try the cooking “Kirschblüte,” an instrumental B-side by the house band of East German pop diva Veronika Fischer. Or a Moroder side project where East LA is re-created in Bavaria with an Autobahn-cruising cover of “Low Rider.” Or Fehlfarben’s “14 Tage” reappropriating the Chic groove for some new-wave Deutsch-rap. Add a version of Ravel’s Boléro done as a jazz-disco joint and you have a wall-to-wall set of Teutonic grooves you’ll be playing in both car and bedroom.
