Blue Moon

Liner Note Author: Asmus Tietchens.
Listening to this album, the soundtrack to a film of the same title and originally issued in 1986, it's hard to credit the fact that 20 years earlier, Dieter Moebius had been a leading light of the German avant-garde electronic music scene. The music that he put together to accompany this film is unfailingly simple, unadorned, repetitive, and generally very pretty. Most of the time, it's minimal and pretty in a way that works very nicely: the bloopy keyboard sounds of "Falsche Ruhe" and "Ablenkung," the slightly more foreboding bloopiness of "Im Wedding," the faintly Japanese-flavored "Dust Off" (with a bassline that could have been written by Mick Karn) and the darker, didgeridoo-sounding "Hoffnungsschimmer" are all good examples of this album working at its best. But there are also some moments when the plodding rhythms and the lack of development create a sound so simple that it borders on insulting: like the rather dunderheadeded "Am See." That track is an exception, though; for the most part, these miniatures are nicely constructed and perfectly suited to their cinematic purpose. ~ Rick Anderson