Electronic Sound Magazine Issue 87 Back Issue

From his gleeful shout of “Magazeeeen!” on the opening track, to his heartfelt plea for peaceful dissent on the final number, Wolfgang’s Flür’s new album is an outstanding and unusual work.
It exists in an out-of-register zone, somewhere between a magazine, a newspaper and an album. And what better way to explore the spirit of our age than with a faked-up shape-shifting media product? Zeitgeist via Zeitgung, so to speak.

But we’re not done with the smoke and the mirrors just yet. Because as soon as we heard Wolfgang’s ‘Magazine 1’, we decided to add a little twist of our own by putting him on the cover of Electronic Sound. Zeitgung via Zeitgung, if you will. In presenting his different ideas under the banner of a magazine, Herr Flür’s broad and often humorous take on the world is contained within its pages, while his instinctively collaborative nature makes it a collegiate affair. Midge Ure, Juan Atkins, Carl Cox, Claudia Brücken and Peter Hook are among the contributors. Like most concept albums, it gets pretty loose at times, but that suits Wolfgang’s brand of quirky storytelling perfectly. Some pieces are silly and light-hearted, some are serious and chilling. Veering between satire and the almost painfully earnest, there’s a twinkle in his eye and a sentimentality not normally found in electronic music. And you won’t find a shred of cynicism, even when he’s having a pop at consumerism and the super-wealthy.

What we’re left with is the image of a man enjoying his life as an observer while still taking full part in the rich and varied and often contrary experience of being human. He is most certainly not a robot. So from one group of magazine makers to another, we wish Wolfgang and his team an impressive month-on-month increase in circulation.