Deine Lakaien
DEINE LAKAIEN
“XXX.-The 30 Years Retrospective”

The first CD contains the well-known classics of the duo as expected: Of course “Colour-ize”, “Dark Star”, “Reincarnation” from the early creative period are present. Starting with the fifth studio album “Kasmodiah” the selection is derived from the single releases. In contrast, the second CD features the “secret” hits of the two artists themselves. Though in chronological order, this results in a coherent and harmonic release on its own.

Longtime fans will not be surprised that the most successful album with regard to chart position is represented by one title only – “Kasmodiah” itself. This song shows a new harmonic guise without losing its intimate intension. But also the audience that is not yet as familiar with the works of Deine Lakaien will get an impression of the variability of the band: The new versions of “Colour-ize” and “Love Me To The End” can be directly compared to the originals on the first CD and will positively surprise fans as well.

While the 2-CD edition addresses Lakaien-newbies, fans should treat themselves with the 4-CD edition, since the last two CDs are simply stunning! For a start, the album “Crystal Palace” could have sounded very differently. Half of the ten songs on CD3 previously unreleased have been produced during the recording time of the last album of Deine Lakaien, and are of the same quality as the songs of the album. “Black Cat” has a truly wonderful hook and competes easily with the dance floor filler “Farewell”. “What’s on Your Mind” and “Frozen Screams” are typically driving Lakaien-ballades, where the latter reveals unusual cracks, while the former literally embraces you. “One By One” convinces through poetic vastness, synthesizers between noise and cold harmonies result in goose bubbles and lead to the strong desire that this piece should be part of the coming Retrospective-concerts, please! But also many dark and experimental songs from all kinds of different creative periods of the past 30 years are to be discovered on the disc. The cherry on the cake is perhaps one of the two only cover songs Deine Lakaien ever recorded – “It’s Alright Ma” from this year’s Nobel laureate in literature Bob Dylan.

The collection closes with until today unreleased live recordings on the last CD. Amongst those, are absolute gems that are now captured for eternity to everybody’s joy. “Lass Mich” from “Kasmodiah” sounding strange to quite some people, for instance sounded live totally convincing as proved here. “Frühlingstraum” in the acoustic version is breathtakingly beautiful. The recoding is from the singular concert in the Neue Nationalgalerie that happened 15 years ago. But reminiscence is revived last but not least by “Generators”. Both pieces were not part of the “Acoustic” concerts since then – what a pity! “Pilgim” showed a strong development during the Crystal-Palace Tour as it often happens with live-performances of Deine Lakaien. Here, the matured, really gorgeous final version is presented. The retrospective concludes – fan’s hearts will beat wild – with the early live recordings from “On The Way To Narmada” and “Bells Of Another Land”.

by CM