Minami Deutsch - With Dim Light

by Raquel Pinheiro

Tokyo’s krautrock band Minami Deutsch, formed by Kyotaro Miula in 2014, just released their second album. With Dim Light, the follower of 2015s Minami Deutsch is a step forward their krautrock debut. More versatile, less rigidly fixed on the genre’s sound and formatting.

In With Dim Light there is far more than krautrock. Krautrock provides the constant backbone, but it gets disguised, changed, intertwined with many other genres, making for a more vivacious, lighter and more accessible record.

Not that there was anything wrong with the band’s debut repetitive and darker sound of precission of the Motorik beat (the 4/4 beat of krautrock bands, first introduced by Can’s drummer Jaki Liebezeit).

The motor skill (Motorik) is still present, and effective, in With Dim Light. However, and unlike the album’s title suggests, the light is not dim at all in Minami Deutsch’s sophomore album. Picking up where Sunrise, Sunset, Minami Deutsch most upbeat track left, With Dim Light opens with Concrete Ocean, where krautrock meet jazz breaks.

Tangled Yarn’s more than seven minutes take us back in time to 1960s psychedelia. Alice isn’t six feet tall here, but it isn’t hard to imagine her going down the rabbit hole. Or climbing up the walls in a lushly, hypnotic, acid trip. Nothing like a Tunnel afterwards. Or maybe a Mother’s Sky, Can’s song it evokes.  

I’ve Seen an UFO is on the same vein, longer, fuzzier and with catchier vocals. Bitter Moon the album’s more intimate moment, a beautiful gentle song where Miula’s soft voice shines. The end comes with Don’t Wanna Go Back, and its nearly ten minutes summarize the whole album in a coherent manner. Krautrock, jazz, fuzz, psychedelia, pop, post-rock meet, mix, and deliver a track where beat and dissonance rule in a captivating manner.

Minami Deutsch have a mini-tour in Europe in May, playing in Portugal May 12, Sabotage Club, Lisboa and May 13, Woodstock 69, Porto.

(Guruguru Brain, 2018)