released November 8, 2019

All original songs are part of the Zement album KLINKER.
All songs were rearranged, remixed, reedited and dubbed.
Artwork by Philipp Dittmar.
Photography by Maria Bayer.
Mastered by Felix-Florian Tödtloff at ætherweight / Berlin.
Released by Verydeeprecords in 2019.

Thank you: Philipp, Stefan, Evi, Carmen, Ingolf, Lukas, Flo, Seppo, Heinzel, Felix and Maria.

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"I thought about this one long, but I guess it is safe to say that „Klinker Auf XLR“ is, in fact, a new album by the band Zement, when in fact, it isn’t.

The title „Klinker Auf XLR“ is a dad-joke-like pun about the similarity of the german „Klinke“ (a jack cable) and the title of Zement’s 2018 album „Klinker“. As much of a joke as this might be to you – I know not everybody is exactly into dad jokes – it shows the three best qualities of the duo of Philipp Hager and Christian Büdel: letting go, letting things flow, and letting things grow.

„Klinker Auf XLR“ is a remix album, and it is also a total power exchange: while Zement provide the fundamental canvas with their raw tracks, they leave enough room and space for all of the 9 artists to build their own songs, to inscribe their own musical handwriting, which differs most of the times completely from the krautrock minimalism Zement usually deliver. As much as Zement’s original songs appear like floating pieces of automatic writing, the remixes are also built pretty associative, as the originals provide the perfect material to tell wholly different stories.

Take An Elm’s remix of „C3S“ as an example, as he is adding quirky emo melody lines and rolling hihats to the original, making it sound like a gang of wild teens writing messages into wet cement. Beware of the pun, again; messages not deep, but elemental. And then, the ending of the song comes with a classic An Elm synth line (by the way – you should really check all of the artists‘ other music and writing!).
Or take a deep dive into Philipp Roth‘s somnambulist footwork edit, leaving behind the motorik system for darker realms and still holding the vibe of the original „C2S“. Oh, this one’s a perfect example as there are 3 versions on the album! While a lot of tracks work by adding up own sounds, Black Annis does the contrary in her version of „C2S“ and strips the song down until it is this vulnerable, naked body – a passionate corpse, a guitar sounding like Marissa Paternoster doing a Hendrix impersonation in the dark room. And compare that one to the Fließgewässer version, which emphasizes the kraut-y feel, but adds a trainload of magic mushrooms and develops it into a 10-minute-death-jam that could have been a Datashock B-side from the 00’s. Same goes for the three versions of CaO*MgO. This all culminates in the „Tushetii Dub“ version Felix-Florian Tödtloff delivers, morphing „C3A“ into a classic King Tubby dubplate.

„Klinker auf XLR“ is as much unadulterated fun as it is a collection of short stories, which tell as much about the artists as they show the imaginative vastness in Zement’s minimalist songwriting approach. Also, it shines a light on that loosely associated experimental freeform scene in which Zement truly act as a joint compound. Oh, those puns."


(Text: Ambassador Kaputt, OTOMATIK MUZIEK)


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"Es ist interessant, "Klinker auf XLR" direkt nach dem Original-Album durchzuhören, da die Themen zwar wiederzuerkennen sind, jedoch in völlig neuem Gewand erscheinen. Dub-lastige Nummern wie Philipp Roths Version von 'C2S' oder Felix-Florian Tödtloffs Mix von 'C3A' könnten noch B-Seiten im klassischen Stile sein, wohingegen Tracks wie der 'S.U.V. Branntkalk Remix' von 'CaO*MgO' oder der 'Eve-Massacre Remix' von 'C2 (A,F)' sich in völlig andere Sphären der elektronischen Musik bewegt."

"Neben der starken Variation in Stilen und Genres unterscheidet sich das Remix Tape von der Platte vor allem in seiner Dynamik. Während "Klinker" noch sehr stark einen treibenden Rhythmus im Fokus hatte, ist auf den XLR Versionen eine viel stärker schwebende Bewegung im Vordergrund. "Klinker auf XLR" fühlt sich mehr an wie die Lichter einer Stadt, die man aus dem Auto oder dem Flugzeug betrachtet. Es ist wie ein Beobachten der bisherigen Werke Zements von außen."

(MangoWaves Hintergründe)

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"As I’ve written about before I really like these Zement guys… they don’t take themselves too seriously and completely destroy that stereotype of Germans lacking humour… I’m married to a German and so already knew this, but it helps to amplify it to the wider world. But just because they are funny doesn’t mean that they don’t put out great music.

This is like a completely different album to ‘Klinker’, and yet there seems to be a common purpose to each of the remixes on offer here. It underlines the minimalism of the original album, but also what a strong foundation the tunes on it provide for others to build up and work on. Zement’s attitude of “letting go, letting things flow, and letting things grow” can really be seen here, and this lack of preciousness has really paid dividends with this set.

In short you will like this album if you appreciated the original and are open-minded enough to spread your listening wings into other genres and ideas. This is because every track on here takes you somewhere different and satisfies different moods and feelings. Collectively it really shows what a remix album can be… and if they were all like this I’d have no complaints at all."

(Simon Smith, The Fragmented Flaneur)