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GD Luxxe, "Make"
Without a single weak track, Make has gone down as one of the most fun albums of 2005 that I missed. As GD Luxxe, Gerhard Potuznik offers up everything from sexy, hot beats to pounding, throbbing punk full of blazing guitars and explosive arrangements that blow up in the most intense and lovingly orchestrated ways possible. Potuznik, Angelika Koehlermann co-founder and former Chicks on Speed member/producer, is resurrecting the dead. Being a difficult project, I had doubts that he could succeed. The challenge is to relive the glory days of late punk and early electronic dance music without sounding contrived, weak, or absolutely bland. I didn't think it was possible, considering how much that period has been bled dry by other lame acts.
He is, however, a creative and dynamic writer and producer. Instead of blatantly ripping off countless, talented performers so as to sound almost as good as they once did, Potuznik simply borrows their attitude and maybe their love of dance to make something new and worth listening to. It doesn't take an education in punk music to hear the punk attitude on this record. As GD Luxxe, Potuznik's voice is a little flat, the lyrics delivered in that cold and calculated manner that suggests the vocalist is an observer reporting things nobody else sees. He sometimes sings as though he is delivering a manifesto, a suggested course of action towards that new and improved world political punk never delivered. His music, however, is lively, full of guitars, animated keyboards, and a myriad of bubbling electronics that either bounce about or elicit dark, very gothic clouds reminiscent of the best make-up wearing bands of the 80s.
Make doesn't sound like a complete rip-off of New Order, Joy Division, Wire, or whoever else you want to name-check because it doesn't bother trying to sound as revolutionary as they did twenty-plus years ago. Potuznik has mixed his own brand of beat-propelled electronic music with his idea of punk music and called it a day, thankfully. Instead of reaching for that searching, youthful sound that marked much of the late 70s and early 80s best bands, Potuznik lets go and merely acknowledges his influences and his love for the genre. Where other, terrible musicians try to add all the drama and seriousness that came naturally for some bands, GD Luxxe has some fun writing his own songs and doesn't bother reaching for anything he can't come across naturally.
The opener, "Hands," sounds like music for traveling in the most Kraftwerkian sense possible. The pounding drums and lovely, dark synthesizers pulse like an engine chugging its way down the longest highway ever constructed, with no goal in sight. Potuznik's voice compliments the music perfectly, sounding like a demented narrator for the journey ahead. And, as dark as the track is, it could easily find its way to the dance floor where all the seedy elements of the track would be celebrated as dark and seething sexuality. "IFY" is more dreamy, full of winding melodies and stuttered rhythms that never quite match up. Even Potuznik's voice is higher on this track, the chorus a lovely combination of echoes, tenuous utterances, and unadorned heat. Repeated listens will reveal that GD Luxxe is a sexual creature if nothing else. When many of the tracks pick up the pace and begin rolling along uncontrollably in their rhythm, it is hard not to think of Make as an animalistic album destined for clubs and house parties. Beyond that, however, the album is wholly listenable, well-written, and deserving of serious attention. This does seem to be, after all, the blueprint for how to acknowledge the 80s without worshipping it or cheapening the decade's better music.
His darker songs are exquisite and with songs like "Profile" or "Your Highways" it is obvious that Potuznik is worried about song craft and atmosphere first and attitude second. Luckily he's loaded with attitude, so the two blend effortlessly.
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